XML Parsing of <![CDATA

[JulienGodenir]

Hello,

when parsing XML data, Alteryx does not recognise <![CDATA as being data. This type of XML file is not very common yet is still used today (by me anyway!). Their role is similar to commenting your code in some regards (for those who code).

Could it be possible to add a functionality to alteryx so that we can have it consider the data between these "tags" to be data? 

Regards,

Julien

[Ned]

CDATA tags certainly parse as data. If you take this:

<a>Outside CDATA&colon; <![CDATA[Testing123&456]]></a>

and run it through the XML parse tool, you get this:

Outside CDATA: Testing123&456

[JulienGodenir]

Hello,

Sorry to re-open the case but with all due respect, Alteryx does not seem to be able to differentiate a < or a > when it is inside a CDATA tag. In my experience, Alteryx solely removes CDATA when parsing the XML and then treats the data as usual. I get errors every time a <, >, or & character is present inside a CDATA tag.

Is there something I am missing?

It has been some time now that I left this in the 'to-do-later' box because I felt I would come up with an elegant solution in due time. Yet all I managed to do is a basic replace on all & characters (I can't do a replace to < and > chars obviously).

I can try to create a small workflow with this issue if you want...

[AngelaO]

Julien found a solution which was pretty simple in the end. Since CDATA is not well formatted XML, Alteryx returns an error when special characters are found. But switching the XMLparse tool to "ignore XML errors and continue" did the job!

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