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  September 8, 2011 9:04:46 AM PDT

  Interstage BPM Version: Version 11.2
  
  Problem Description:
  

  There are cases where a user would want to evaluate an XML structure to determine the total number of nested XML elements or evaluate to see if a nested XML element exists.

  In this example, we will use the following XML structure and assume that it is stored within a user defined attribute (UDA) named “FoodUDA”.

  <Food>
    <foodData>
      <foodRecords>
        <Fruit>
          <fruitType>Apple<fruitType>
        </Fruit>
        <Fruit>
          <fruitType>Orange</fruitType>
        </Fruit>
      </foodRecords>
    </foodData>
  </Food>
  
  
  Solution:
  

  Solution# 1: In order to find the total the XData.count(xpath) method can be used on the XML structure.  This is a method, given an xpath, would return the number of child elements found with a given name.

  If there are NO children with that name, it returns 0
  If there is one child with that name, it returns 1
  If there are 5 children with that name, it returns 5

  For example, based on the example above, xdata.count(“Food/foodData/Fruit/fruitType”) would return 2. 

  Solution#2: Another solution that is available is to use the XData.getValue in conjunction with the javascript dot notation to achieve the loop exist condition

  if (uda.FoodUDA.Food.foodData.foodRecords.Fruit[2].getValue(“fruitType”) != null) {
  uda.NumOfTaskRecords = 2;

  However, this is not the same as above and will not work:

  if(uda.FoodUDA.Food.foodData.foodRecords.getValue(“Fruit[2]”!=null){
  uda.NumOfTaskRecords = 2;

  This will not work since if Fruit[2] does exist, it will not be a leaf node (as it will have <fruitType> under it), and method getValue will complain that Fruit [2] is not a leaf node.
  
  More detail can be found about these method and the XData class from the API documentation.
  
  

  Author: Marc Bui
  Attachment: How_to_Use_Model_API_to_Evaluate_Existence_of_XML_Element.zip