Read config data from file in xPression

Question

I am very new to xpression, i.e. I am team leader for a number of xPression developers. I have a development background and having looked at some of the documents the team have developed, I have a question around the ability to read data from a config file/database at run time. The scenario is as follows. Our company has two sales channels that have different phone numbers for the sales office. As a result the developers have developed something like this based on the fact that the company identifier is passed in the XML...

a variable PHONE_NUMBER' is initiated for a phone number. Then the following logic has been programmed...

If company = 'A' then

PHONE_NUMBER = '111111111111'

Else

PHONE_NUMBER = '222222222222'

Considering that we have a LOT of documents and this logic exist in almost all of them, the developer in me says there HAS to be a better way to do this, i.e. read the phone numbers from a config file or something. A change of phone number will mean ALL the documents will have to be changed!!!! Can anyone tell me whether this is possible?

Thank you in advance.

R_14 · Answer

Hi Rediroma,

Yes it is possible !

We can achieve your requirement by using USE EXIT

About USER EXIT:

Its and inbuilt xPression component, which helps the designers to populate a dynamic value that doesn’t come from a data source.
Its basic function is, during a document assembly -- a user defined Java functioned is called from xPression

1 Java function can be invoked with any number of input parameters (static / dynamic variables) of any type (number/string) from xPression.

2. The java function will be processed by the Application server.

3. After processing the input, a java USER EXIT function can return only a String value back to xPression, The returned value is used to populate in the output .

Using the above-mentioned basic functionality we can implement all our strange requirements that are not provides as a part of xPression Suite.

shankargk · Answer

Hi R@ju,

We are passing payload xml through web services to invoke document generation. I am trying to parse payload xml in user exit routine to apply more business rules from database.

I used sample UserExitTest (extends from UserExitDataReader) from the documentation and configured user exit data source from xAdmin. For some reasons, this method is not getting invoked during assembly/publishing. Is there is any documentation or any set of instructions to invoke this method?

Thanks

Shankar

R_14 · Answer

Hi Shankar,

I guess you are deviating from your requirements, by referring to USER EXIT AUTHENTICATION in the user guides.

There is a lot of difference between USER EXIT AUTEHNTICATIONS and document level USER EXITS

Creation of USER EXIT is a bit different and, it not mentioned clearly in the user guides.

So, I have generated a document which will help you in creating USER EXITS and get the things done!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/81851060/Steps%20Involved%20in%20creating%20a%20UseExit.pdf

I am attaching it to the same thread, Please let me know if you have any concerns

Thanks,

Raju

Enterprise Support

Read config data from file in xPression

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