Hi All,
I've been away from C# for a couple of years
and looking forward to picking it up again mainly for my own purposes.
I did a google on 'compare XML' but did not come up with much and
given that with 2008
(have the Beta2) around the corner thought I would start a new thread here.
I want to tap into several web XML feeds and compare the data, do some analysis, filter then display and review the results. Inevitably whilst
the feeds carry (all/some of) the same data they will not have the same
element names etc. These feeds would change often and I would need to repeat at frequent intervals, if not continuously!
I have never really got into XML, but would now like to have ago at
this project. My initial thoughts are that I would read the feeds and rename
the items with my own 'common' names and then load them into a Database
for comparison.
Of course this might be totally the wrong way etc etc and (at this stage;-)))
I am not looking for somebody to write the code for me, rather have
someone give me some pointers, so as I can learn as I go.
Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated and I look forward to visiting the site regularly again.
Apologies if I am in the wrong forum as I am sure the emphasis may be more on XML and Database rather than C# itself etc.
Cheers
Alan
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AlanPosted Nov 22, 2007, 5:00 PM
No, you're not seeing things - it's a different 'Alan' :-)
Although there's a huge amount of XML support in the .NET framework, to my knowledge, there's nothing which would really help much with a task such as this and so you'd probably have to fall back on regular expressions (System.Text.RegularExpressions) and the methods of the System.String class to parse/compare the XML feeds.
However, Microsoft themselves wrote a free 'XML Diff and Patch GUI Tool' a few years back which I think may help you and there's a link here on how to use it:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/aa302295.aspx
It can be downloaded nowadays from the following page:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/xml/Bb190622.aspx
The only problem with this tool is that it uses v1.1 of the framework which is a nuisance if you're currently using v2.0 exclusively:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1433652&SiteID=1
I'm not aware of any updates in the pipeline.
Good luck!
Alan
AlanPosted Nov 22, 2007, 11:36 AM
I would really appreciate it if anyone could just respond by saying it was a stupid question or its a difficult one.
Many Thanks
Alan