crossTransform - examples

The file format

• For our example, we choose a simple format: It is an XML format with 4 different tags:
• The root tag named tst and its child tags:
  • n
  • i
  • l

A file in this format could look like this:

<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="UTF-8"standalone="no"?><tst><n>normal text</n><n>normal text with <i>inline text</i>.</n>&lt;l>locked text&lt;/l>
  </tst>

Across could surely read this file without crossTransform, but this format has been chosen, because it is easy to process in our little tool. So for this example, we assume, Across couldn't read this file format. To read it, Across needs "normal" instead of "n", "inline" instead of "i", and "locked" instead of "l".

The plugin xml

This file needs to be placed under %ProgramFiles%\across\across\plugin. According to the description of the format, the file looks like this:

<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="UTF-8"?><plugintype="crossTransform plugin"name="tst crossTransform PlugIn"><docassoending=".tst"formatGUID="{61af5078-5509-4d3e-8739-a46961175402}"description="tst document"template="TST"extGUID="{075C51D9-EEEA-4583-8333-C76B44C27FFF}"/><preprocessingcommand="across SDK\Samples\crossTransform\Support for own format\TST2XML.bat"/><postprocessingcommand="across SDK\Samples\crossTransform\Support for own format\XML2TST.bat"/></plugin>

The Document Template

In the plugin file. a document template is specified, which should be used for this type of document.

• It is named TST and is very simple:
• normal is defined as Element - Normal
• inline is defined as Element - Inline
• locked is defined as Element - Locked

The tool

This tool is written in C# and is pretty straightforward. First, it determines whether it has been called during pre-processing or during post-processing. To do this, we just have to check the number of supplied parameters. If we have 2 parameters, we are in pre-processing, if we have 3, we are in post-processing.

When in pre-processing, the tool loads the file, replaces all "n" tags with "normal" tags, all "i" tags with "inline" tags and all "l" tags with "locked" tags. When in post-processing, the tools does this vice-versa.

Let's see the code:

staticvoid Main(string[] args){//We need at least 2 arguments!if(args.Length <2)return;// if first argument is /x we are in postprocessing:if(args[0]=="/x"){
      XmlDocument doc =new XmlDocument();
      doc.Load(args[1]);
      XmlNode root = doc.DocumentElement;
      postProcess(ref doc,ref root);
      doc.Save(args[1]);}else{
      XmlDocument doc =new XmlDocument();
      doc.Load(args[0]);
      XmlNode root = doc.DocumentElement;
      preProcess(ref doc,ref root);
      doc.Save(args[1]);}}privatestaticvoid preProcess(ref XmlDocument doc,ref XmlNode xmlElement){for(int i =0; i < xmlElement.ChildNodes.Count; i++){
      XmlNode node = xmlElement.ChildNodes[i];
      XmlNode newNode =null;if(node.Name =="n")
        newNode = doc.CreateElement("normal");elseif(node.Name =="i")
        newNode = doc.CreateElement("inline");elseif(node.Name =="l")
        newNode = doc.CreateElement("locked");elsecontinue;
      newNode.InnerXml = node.InnerXml;
      xmlElement.ReplaceChild(newNode, node);//we need to call it recursivly, to also//preprocess the child tags of the current tag
      preProcess(ref doc,ref newNode);}}privatestaticvoid postProcess(ref XmlDocument doc,ref XmlNode xmlElement){for(int i =0; i < xmlElement.ChildNodes.Count; i++){
     XmlNode node = xmlElement.ChildNodes[i];
     XmlNode newNode =null;if(node.Name =="normal") 
       newNode = doc.CreateElement("n");elseif(node.Name =="inline")
        newNode = doc.CreateElement("i");elseif(node.Name =="locked")
        newNode = doc.CreateElement("l");elsecontinue;
      newNode.InnerXml = node.InnerXml;
      xmlElement.ReplaceChild(newNode, node);//we need to call it recursivly, to also,//postprocess the child tags of the current tag
     postProcess(ref doc,ref newNode);}}