- Insights into NotesSax Parser
I was working on a project that needs to import XML. Since the files could become rather big I opted not to use DXL but the NotesSAX parser class. When you are a Lotus Script die hard without much exposure to other languages the SAX parser has a "very first" for you: definition of event handlers. For those VB.NET, C#, Java and other buffs it's nothing special.
The nice thing about SAX parsers (compared to text parsing): they fix the character set for you. For example the snippet:
<company> Peter & Pan</company>
will arrive as a StartElement event, a series of Character events and one Stop event. The NotesSAX parser actually will deliver 3 Character events! Since the & is an encoded entry, the text will be split into 3 and delivered as "Peter " "&" " Pan". Nota bene: there are leading and trailing spaces you can't trim. Typically you would create a steering object, that keeps the state where in XML stream you are and write out your text on a Element (either Start or End) into whatever you want to write to. I'll post some sample code for the Excel project soon.
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