Training:Exporting files from MDriven Server

Special column name
filename
path
xslt	also see the XsltTransformXml OCL operator
filedata
savefile

filename

path

xslt

filedata

savefile

Producing Export Files From MDriven Server

You can also write files by adding an action column called “savefile” (case sensitive). When the periodic action supervisor in MDrivenServer sees this action column, it looks for two additional columns: path and filename (case insensitive). If these are found, the complete result of the ViewModel is streamed out as XML by using the ViewModelXMLUtils.GetDataAsXml method. The XML is then saved to path/filename.

Like this:

In a real-world application, it looks like this:

Notice that both the path and filename are evaluated expressions. Furthermore, the Action UpdateExportTime is executed last – and it changes some data. Since the whole execution is wrapped in a memory transaction, we make sure that we do not update the export time unless the file was written and everything is ok.

The resulting file looks like this:

Shaping and Transforming Export Files

This SaveFile action has been updated to look for a column named XSLT. If it is found, the contents of the field are assumed to be a valid XSLT transformation. The XML from the ViewModel is transformed with the XSLT and the result is saved as above.

So if your XSLT is…

<?xml version='1.0'?>
 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'
 version='1.0'> <xsl:output method='text' omit-xml-declaration='yes'/> 
            <xsl:value-of select='ArticleNumber'/>,<xsl:value-of
 select='SalesArticleName'/>
        </xsl:template>
 </xsl:stylesheet>

… then your output would be…

NO101087,Cosmica Tygg 90 ST…

New Addition March 2019: Arbitrary Filedata

Add a ViewModel column named "filedata". This results in an Image, Blob, or other byte array type, and this data is saved rather than the ViewModel-data-as-XML.

If the "filedata"-column is of type string, the string content is written to the file.

See also: SQLExport