Converting non-delimited text into name/value pairs in Delphi
- by robsoft
I've got a text file that arrives at my application as many lines of the following form:
<row amount="192.00" store="10" transaction_date="2009-10-22T12:08:49.640"
comp_name="blah "
comp_ref="C65551253E7A4589A54D7CCD468D8AFA"
name="Accrington "/>
and I'd like to turn this 'row' into a series of name/value pairs in a given TStringList (there could be dozens of these <row>s in the file, so eventually I will want to iterate through the file breaking each row into name/value pairs in turn).
The problem I've got is that the data isn't obviously delimited (technically, I suppose it's space delimited). Now if it wasn't for the fact that some of the values contain leading or trailing spaces, I could probably make a few reasonable assumptions and code something to break a row up based on spaces. But as the values themselves may or may not contain spaces, I don't see an obvious way to do this. Delphi' TStringList.CommaText doesn't help, and I've tried playing around with Delimiter but I get caught-out by the spaces inside the values each time.
Does anyone have a clever Delphi technique for turning the sample above into something resembling this? ;
amount="192.00"
store="10"
transaction_date="2009-10-22T12:08:49.640"
comp_name="blah "
comp_ref="C65551253E7A4589A54D7CCD468D8AFA"
name="Accrington "
Unfortunately, as is usually the case with this kind of thing, I don't have any control over the format of the data to begin with - I can't go back and 'make' it comma delimited at source, for instance. Although I guess I could probably write some code to turn it into comma delimited - would rather find a nice way to work with what I have though.
This would be in Delphi 2007, if it makes any difference.
