Thread: Get Topic Data As Xml Stream

For the IMOJ site, we needed a simple way to manage Xml content (somewhat static) in the admin site, but feed it back automatically to the Flash objects in Xml format.

What we ended up doing so (we can manage all the data in the admin site topics) is to create this XmlPackage called topicasxml.xml.config (TopicAsXml)

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<package version="2.1" displayname="Topic Data As Xml" debug="false" allowengine="true" includeentityhelper="false">

	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->
	<!-- Copyright AspDotNetStorefront.com, 1995-2008.  All Rights Reserved.					                -->
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	<!-- For details on this license please visit  the product homepage at the URL above.		                -->
	<!-- THE ABOVE NOTICE MUST REMAIN INTACT.                                                                   -->
	<!--                                                                                                        -->
	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->

    <HTTPHeaders>
        <HTTPHeader headername="Content-Type" headervalue="text/xml" />
    </HTTPHeaders>
    
    <query name="Topics" rowElementName="Topic">
        <sql>
            <![CDATA[
			select * from Topic T with (NOLOCK) where Name=@TopicName
            ]]>
		</sql>
        <queryparam paramname="@TopicName" paramtype="request" requestparamname="topic" sqlDataType="varchar" defvalue=""  validationpattern="" />
    </query>

    <PackageTransform>
    
        <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aspdnsf="urn:aspdnsf" exclude-result-prefixes="aspdnsf">
          <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" />

	<!-- the topic description actually had the tiltviewr Xml in it, just return it -->
            <xsl:template match="/">
				<xsl:value-of select="/root/Topics/Topic/Description" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
            </xsl:template>

		</xsl:stylesheet>

    </PackageTransform>
</package>

This is a very simple XmlPackage that now allows you to get a topic returned from the HTTP call as an Xml file back (not just HTML).

You just invoke it with the syntax:

x-topicasxml.aspx?topic={topicnamehere}

(this x- syntax uses our HTTP Handler ExecXmlPackage call)

Note that you use the x- syntax to invoke it, and the {topicnamehere} is the name of the topic (which contains Xml Data) that you want returned.

An example is this:

http://www.imoj.com/x-topicasxml.asp...otographersxml

This is how we are feeding data to the internal flash objects.

The way I wrote the XmlPackage as shown only works with DB based topics (not file based topics), and the actual Topic should just contain the Xml you want returned (no HTML, head, etc).

Anyway, just another little trick. We'll include this XmlPackage in the core on subsequent builds, as it's quite handy and this concept would work on any site.

See this thread for more info on this type of subject also:

http://forums.aspdotnetstorefront.co...ad.php?t=10789