XML Encoding from Business One - Unable to Read in a 3rd Party APP

Question

Hi:
I have created an Add-On app that produces an XML document file when a new item is created or an existing item is updated. However, the 3rd party app that I am trying to integrate into is unable to read this XML. After doing some research, the following appears to be the issue.
SBO produces the data with UTF-16 which is a double byte encoding for XML's. The 3rd party app that I have appears to be able to handle only single byte encoding formats such as UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1.
I would like to know if there is a way in SDK to convert the output XML format to a single byte encoding such as ISO-8859-1. Can anyone please tell me how to achieve that in my Add-On code?
Thank you.
Kushal Dutta

Answer 1

Hi Kushal,
You can use a XLST transformation to convert from UTF-16 to UTF-8.
The coding goes something like this:
XmlReader xmlRdr = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(sXML));
XmlWriterSettings xmlWtrSettings = new XmlWriterSettings();
xmlWtrSettings.Encoding = Encoding.Unicode;
XmlWriter xmlWtr = XmlWriter.Create(sOutFile, xmlWtrSettings);
XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
xslt.Load(sTransformFile);
xslt.Transform(xmlRdr, xmlWtr);
xmlWtr.Flush();
xmlWtr.Close();
xmlRdr.Close();
Where sXML is the XML string generated by the SBO GetAsXML method, sOutFile is the path and filename where the transformed XML will be created and sTransformFile is the path of the XLST file.
Assuming that you wish to retain the same XML structure as before, the XLST file should look something like the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
     <BOM>
          <xsl:for-each select="BOM/BO">
          <BO>
               <AdmInfo>
                    <Object>
                         <xsl:value-of select="AdmInfo/Object"/>
                    </Object>
               </AdmInfo>
               <ORDR>
                    <xsl:for-each select="ORDR/row">
                    <row>
                         <DocEntry>
                              <xsl:value-of select="DocEntry"/>
                         </DocEntry>
                         <DocNum>
                              <xsl:value-of select="DocNum"/>
                         </DocNum>
                         <DocDate>
                              <xsl:value-of select="DocDate"/>
                         </DocDate>
                         <DocDueDate>
                              <xsl:value-of select="DocDueDate"/>
                         </DocDueDate>
                         <DocStatus>
                              <xsl:value-of select="DocStatus"/>
                         </DocStatus>
                         <Cancelled>
                              <xsl:value-of select="CANCELED"/>
                         </Cancelled>
                         <CardCode>
                              <xsl:value-of select="CardCode"/>
                         </CardCode>
                         <CardName>
                              <xsl:value-of select="CardName"/>
                         </CardName>
                         <NumAtCard>
                              <xsl:value-of select="NumAtCard"/>
                         </NumAtCard>
                    </row>
                    </xsl:for-each>
               </ORDR>
               <RDR1>
                    <xsl:for-each select="RDR1/row">
                    <xsl:sort select="LineNum" />
                    <row>
                         <LineNum>
                              <xsl:value-of select="LineNum"/>
                         </LineNum>
                         <ItemCode>
                              <xsl:value-of select="ItemCode"/>
                         </ItemCode>
                         <Dscription>
                              <xsl:value-of select="Dscription"/>
                         </Dscription>
                         <Quantity>
                              <xsl:value-of select="Quantity"/>
                         </Quantity>
                         <WhsCode>
                              <xsl:value-of select="WhsCode"/>
                         </WhsCode>
                         <BaseType>
                              <xsl:value-of select="BaseType"/>
                         </BaseType>
                         <BaseEntry>
                              <xsl:value-of select="BaseEntry"/>
                         </BaseEntry>
                         <BaseLine>
                              <xsl:value-of select="BaseLine"/>
                         </BaseLine>
                         <FreeTxt>
                              <xsl:value-of select="FreeTxt"/>
                         </FreeTxt>
                    </row>
                    </xsl:for-each>
               </RDR1>
          </BO>
          </xsl:for-each>
     </BOM>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
The above example shows a XLST transform for the sales order document type. This example is for use with the xet_ValidNodesOnly setting for the XmlExportType company property. If you are using a different XmlExportType setting then the XLST will be slightly different but the principal is the same. For simplicity, I have shown only a cut-down list of the fields from the sales order but other fields and tables can be included (assuming that they are in the original XML from SBO).
Kind Regards,
Owen
P.S. Sorry for the lack of indentation on the XML file. It was there when I created this post but the forum removes the indentation.