Passing file location as URL parameter for xml query

Question

Hi all,
A quick question regarding using a parameter to set the source URL in an XML query template.
When assigning the URL, the static text works perfectly eg:
//<servername>/<folder>/samplefile.xml . The xml is returned as required.
However, we wish to call this from a BLS txn and set the source URL dynamically.
To test this we assigned //<servername>/<folder>/samplefile.xml to Parameter no 1 and insert [Param.1] in the source URL field. No luck.
Any suggestions?
Cheers
Mark

Answer 1

Mark,
In BLS, the double slashes (escaping the single /) are only necessary if you are building the full http url string in the link editor.
If your XMLQuery template is something like http://localhost/Folder/Subfolder/[Param.1] then put in a default param value in the query template and make sure the query test works.  Then configure (or reconfigure) this in your BLS transaction and generate the sample results.  All you should have to do in BLS then is to assign your Transaction or Local property to the Param.1 link in your XMLQuery action block.  All of the dynamic replacement and subsequent xml file retrieval should then be done by the XMLQuery itself.
If you can keep the majority of the URL in the XMLQuery itself and then just dynamically pass it the Param.1 piece it will be very easy to test and configure (also use localhost if the file lives on the xMII web server), but if you have to build the string external in BLS I would recommend using a combination of the expression editor and a Local property.  If the Local string property contains the base of http://localhost/Folder/Subfolder/ (no quotes or character escaping needed for the default value of a string property) then just assign something like the following to your Param.1 property of the XMLQuery:  Local.URLBase & "filename.xml" (a simple evaluate will confirm your efforts).
Regards,
Jeremy