Re: Data Structure Definition for Repeating XML Element

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 1:03 PM Stephen Coyle <stephenfcoyle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

And if they respond with "Tough luck kid", what is the alternative?
I assume %Handler could deal with this? Or if this is indeed a flaw in the
XML, is it a fatal flaw that MUST be corrected when the XML itself is
created?

If they have the power to tell you "Tough luck kid" then by definition
the "flaw" doesn't HAVE to be corrected upon creation. So it's not
"fatal" in any practical sense. They have the power not to fix it, and
you have the power to work around it.

By all means, if they're willing to add the tags to make the structure
nicer, go with that. But if they tell you tough luck, or you don't
want to wait, then go ahead and work around it. There are several
things you could try. Jon seems to think the XML-INTO approach is
still salvageable with the XML as-is, and it may well be (I don't work
with XML myself very much).

If it turns out that it's not, then one thing you could do is write
your own preprocessor to insert the tags yourself, and then use
XML-INTO. That's probably what I'd try first. There are more extreme
measures like scrapping XML-INTO entirely, but you can hold off on
that until simpler approaches prove insufficient.

John Y.