XML to SQL via CF

Question

Hi
I need to point to an XML feed and import that feed into SQL
using CF.
Is this possible and if so can someone guide me?
Thanks

Answer 1

cfxml will create create an XML Document Object that you can
then use standard array and structure function to manipulate it.
How that would play out for you depends on the structure of the XML
feed you are grabbing.
Here's a basic sample of using CF's XML functions.
For simplicity's sake, let's say our XML document looked like
this:
<feeds>
<feed>
<name>Feed 1</name>
<link>
http://www.somesite.com/</link>
</feed>
<feed>
<name>Feed 2</name>
<link>
http://www.someothersite.com/</link>
</feed>
</feeds>
Read in the XML feed (if it's remote, you'd use cfhttp
instead of cffile):
<cffile fule="C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\mysitedir\myXML.xml"
variable="xmlFeed" />
Then you can parse it with XMLParse()
<cfset feed=XMLParse(xmlFeed)/>
This creates an XML Document Object -- keep in mind that an
XML document is only a string. Using XmlParse() converts a valid
XML document (the string) into a an XML Document Object that CF can
then "really" work with.
You can now use structure and array functions to loop over
the XML Document Object, store them in variables, output them,
write them to a database, etc.
<cfdump var="#xmlObj.feeds.feed[1].link.xmlText#">
This should output the link,
http://www.somesite.com/ to the
browser.
I'm guessing that you do not want to simply grab and store
the entire XML feed as one document in a database. If that's the
case, you can just read the file (cffile or cfhttp) and then store
the variable contents in a DB.
Anyway, hope this helps you get a little further down the
road with CF and XML.
Cheers,
Craig