The WRITE-XML / WRITE-XMLSCHEMA methods allow invalid characters in element names

The SERIALIZE-NAME and XML-NODE-NAME options for Temp-Tables and ProDataSets accept characters that are invalid for XML node names (elements, attributes). WRITE-XML / WRITE-XML-SCHEMA methods will then produce invalid documents if such characters are used. Such documents can not be read back using OpenEdge.

Nov 22, 2016
Knowledge

Title

URL Name

WRITE-XML-WRITE-XMLSCHEMA-methods-allow-invalid-characters-in-element-names

Article Number

000183517

Environment

Product: OpenEdge Version: 11.x OS: All supported platforms Other: XML

Question/Problem Description

The WRITE-XML and WRITEXML-SCHEMA methods for a Temp-Table and ProDataSet produce invalid XML documents when invalid XML characters are specified for the SERIALIZE-NAME or XML-NODE-NAME options within the DEFINE TEMP-TABLE and DEFINE DATASET statements.

The XML documents cannot be read back using the READ-XML and READ-XMLSCHEMA methods, instead they fail with the following error messages:

Error reading XML file '<file>'. (13035)
READ-XML encountered an error while parsing the XML Document: 'Invalid element name '<namer>''. (13064)

Steps to Reproduce

Run the attached .p (uncomment one of the lines which states "not caught on write, caught on read").

Clarifying Information

Temp-table fields do have SERIALIZE-NAME or XML-NODE-NAME option specified n DEFINE TEMP-TABLE statement. The name specified in those options contain characters that are invalid in XML. XML Tag names cannot contain any of the characters :!"#$%&'()*+,/;<=>?@[\]^`{|}~, nor a space character, and cannot begin with "-", ".", or a numeric digit.

Only the following characters produce error 13640 when the WRITE-XML and WRITEXML-SCHEMA methods are executed: #$%& and the space character since OpenEdge 11.6.2.

SERIALIZE-NAME is used for both XML documents and JSON strings. This article only applies to XML documents. JSON uses different, less restrictive naming rules.

As a simple example, consider the following code which has a colon in SERIALIZE-NAME:

DEFINE TEMP-TABLE TT-SAMPLE NO-UNDO
  FIELD cFOOBAR AS CHARACTER FORMAT "X(10)" SERIALIZE-NAME "Foo:Bar".

CREATE TT-SAMPLE.

TEMP-TABLE TT-SAMPLE:WRITE-XML('file', 'abc.xml', true).

The abc.xml generated by the WRITE-XML method has the word "Foo:Bar" as the XML tag name:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<TT-SAMPLE xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">;
  <TT-SAMPLERow>
    <Foo:Bar/>
  </TT-SAMPLERow>
</TT-SAMPLE>

Error Message

Defect Number

PSC00345391, PSC00352182 / OCTA-3493

Enhancement Number

Cause

The WRITE-XML / WRITE-XMLSCHEMA methods are supposed to check for invalid characters and raise the following error:

Invalid XML character in <object> name: <name>. (13640)

The logic behind this doesn't check for all invalid characters.

Resolution

Upgrade to OpenEdge 11.6.2 which addresses the issue for the space character (" ").

At the time of writing, a fix for the remaining characters has not yet been made available.

Workaround

Notes

Keyword Phrase

Last Modified Date

12/29/2021 11:25 PM

The WRITE-XML / WRITE-XMLSCHEMA methods allow invalid characters in element names

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