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Parsing XML With ColdFusion MX
A lot of people want to integrate XML into their ColdFusion applications but they don't know how to parse it. Parsing XML with ColdFusion MX is really simple. If you know me and have seen some of my applications, I use cfscript a lot. I've just recently completed cfblog which is a ColdFusion blog system; once it was completed, I needed something else to do. I know I don't submit a lot of tutorials here, but usually when I submit one, it'll be good (maybe).

What we'll be using:
cfhttp
xmlparse
QueryNew
QueryAddRow
QuerySetCell
cfquery
cfoutput
cfscript

To understand this tutorial, you will have to know the basic concpets of cfscript, and the Query functions.

I commented the code when I was writing it so in a way, it is its own tutorial :P

<cfhttp url="http://www.xp-resources.com/easycfm.xml" method="GET">

<cfscript>
    xmlfile = xmlparse(cfhttp.filecontent); //Parses the XML
    xmlsize = arraylen(xmlfile.Tutorials.xmlchildren); //Tutorials is the parent tree
    xmlqry = QueryNew("id, title, url, author, platform, descr"); //Sets a query for output
    QueryAddRow(xmlqry,xmlsize);

    for(a=1;a LTE xmlsize;a=a+1) {
        QuerySetCell(xmlqry,"title",xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].Title.xmlText,a);
        //xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].Title.xmlText gets the text of the title for the current tutorial (xmlText)
        QuerySetCell(xmlqry,"url",xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].URL.xmlText,a);
        QuerySetCell(xmlqry,"author",xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].Author.xmlText,a);
        QuerySetCell(xmlqry,"platform",xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].Platform.xmlText,a);
        QuerySetCell(xmlqry,"descr",xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].Description.xmlText,a);
        QuerySetCell(xmlqry,"id",xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].xmlAttributes.id,a);
        //xmlfile.Tutorials.TutorialID[a].xmlAttributes.id gets the value of the attribute in the tag
    }
</cfscript>

<cfquery name="tutorials" dbtype="query">
    SELECT        *
    FROM           xmlqry
    ORDER BY     id DESC
</cfquery>

<cfoutput query="tutorials">
    <a href="#url#" target="_blank">#title#</a> - #descr#
    <br>
    --Author: #author#
    <br><br>
</cfoutput>


Questions? Comments? Need Help? Contact Drew Tempelmeyer.