I wrote a simple package installer in WinBatch that needs to update an XML file with information about
the package contents. My first stab at it involved loading
the file with Msxml2.DOMDocument, adding nodes and data as required, then saving
the data back to disk. This worked well enough, except that it would not create tab and CR/LF whitespace in
the new data.
The solution I came up with was writing an XSL stylesheet that would recreate
the XML file with whitespace added back in. I'm doing this by:
loading
the XSL file into an Msxml2.FreeThreadedDOMDocument object
setting that object as
the stylesheet property of an Msxml2.XSLTemplate object
creating an XSL processor via Msxml2.XSLTemplate.createProcessor()
setting my original Msxml2.DOMDocument as
the input property of
the XSL processor
Calling transform() method of
the XSL processor, and saving
the output to a file.
This works as for as reformatting
the XML file with tabs and carriage returns, but my XML declaration comes out either as <?xml version="1.0"?> or <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?> depending on whether I used Msxml2.*.6.0 or Msxml2.* objects (a fall back if
the system doesn't have 6.0).
If
the encoding is set to UTF-16, Msxml12.DOMDocument complains about trying to convert UTF-16 to 1-byte encoding
the next time I run my package installer. I've tried creating and adding an XML declaration using both createProcessingInstruction() to both
the XML and XSL DOM objects, but neither one seems to affect
the output of
the XSLTemplate processor. I've also set encoding to UTF-8 in
the <xsl:output/> tag in my XSL file.
Here is
the relevant code in my Winbatch script:
xmlDoc = ObjectCreate("Msxml2.DOMDocument.6.0")
if !xmlDoc then xmlDoc = ObjectCreate("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
xmlDoc.async = @FALSE
xmlDoc.validateOnParse = @TRUE
xmlDoc.resolveExternals = @TRUE
xmlDoc.preserveWhiteSpace = @TRUE
xmlDoc.setProperty("SelectionLanguge", "XPath")
xmlDoc.setProperty("SelectionNamespaces", "xmlns:fns='http://www.abc.com/f_namespace'")
xmlDoc.load(xml_file_path)
xslStyleSheet = ObjectCreate("Msxml2.FreeThreadedDOMDocument.6.0")
if !xslStyleSheet then xslStyleSheet = ObjectCreate("Msxml2.FreeThreadedDOMDocument")
xslStyleSheet.async = @FALSE
xslStyleSheet.validateOnParse = @TRUE
xslStyleSheet.load(xsl_style_sheet_path)
xslTemplate = ObjectCreate("Msxml2.XSLTemplate.6.0")
if !xslTemplate then xslTemplate = ObjectCreate("Msxml2.XSLTemplate")
xslTemplate.stylesheet = xslStyleSheet
processor = xslTemplate.createProcessor()
processor.input = xmlDoc
processor.transform()
; create a new file and write
the XML processor output to it
fh = FileOpen(output_file_path, "WRITE" , @FALSE)
FileWrite(fh, processor.output)
FileClose(fh)
The style sheet, with some slight changes to protect
the innocent:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.1">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" encoding="UTF-8"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<fns:test_station xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:fns="http://www.abc.com/f_namespace">
<xsl:for-each select="/fns:test_station/identification">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<identification>
<xsl:for-each select="./*">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
</identification>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each select="/fns:test_station/software">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<software>
<xsl:for-each select="./package">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<package>
<xsl:for-each select="./*">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
</package>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
</software>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:for-each select="/fns:test_station/calibration">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<calibration>
<xsl:for-each select="./item">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<item>
<xsl:for-each select="./*">
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
<xsl:copy-of select="."/>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
</item>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:text>
 </xsl:text>
</calibration>
</xsl:for-each>
</fns:test_station>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
And this is a sample output file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<fns:test_station xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:fns="http://www.abc.com/f_namespace">
<software>
<package>
<part_number>123456789</part_number>
<version>00</version>
<test_category>1</test_category>
<description>name of
software package</description>
<execution_path>c:\program files\test\test.exe</execution_path>
<execution_arguments>arguments</execution_arguments>
<crc_path>c:\ste_config\crc\123456789.lst</crc_path>
<uninstall_path>c:\ste_config\uninstall\uninst_123456789.bat</uninstall_path>
<install_timestamp>2009-11-09T14:00:44</install_timestamp>
</package>
</software>
</fns:test_station>
