The following operations and components are using a built-in mapping of XML to UML classes and vice versa:

• Components:

  • SOAP Adapter and SOAP Service exchanging document style/literal encoded messages.
    The mapping procedures are used, when mapping SOAP messages to UML classes and back.

    The mapping procedures described below do not work with SOAP/RPC encoding.

  • REST Adapter and REST Service
    The mapping procedures are used, when mapping REST calls to UML classes and back.
• Operations:
  • xmlToClass() Operation for Strings
  • xmlToClass() Operation for Blobs
  • classToXML()
  • classToJSON() Operation
  • jsonToClass() Operation

Mapping of UML classes to XML documents is controlled by stereotypes assigned to class attributes and association ends.

Example File (Builder project E2E Action Language/XML):

<your example path>\E2E Action Language\XML\uml\xmlSimpleConversions.xml <your example path>\E2E Action Language\XML\uml\xmlComplexConversions.xml

Example File (Builder project Add-ons/URL):

<your example path>\Add-ons\URL\uml\urlUrl.xml

Controlling the Mapping by Using Stereotypes

Stereotypes control how UML class properties (attributes and association ends) are serialized to an XML document. If no stereotype is assigned, the following default rules apply for mapping XML to UML classes:

• XML attributes are mapped to class attributes.
• XML elements are mapped to class associations ends.
• The XML root element is named according to the definitions in the service composite, tagged value Class To XML Default Root Name (also see Frontend Components).

Stereotypes

To control the mapping, the following stereotypes are available:

Tagged Values

Examples

Mapping Mixed Content XML to a UML Class

Example File (Builder project Add-ons/URL):

<your example path>\Add-ons\URL\uml\urlUrl.xml

The following example shows how to convert an XML data structure with mixed content to an UML class.

Suppose the following XML data structure with two elements street and city is given:

<address id="4711">
	<street id="4711-1">13, Coal Street</street>
	<city id="4711-2">New York, NY 10017, USA</city>
</address>

The class diagram below illustrates how to map the content of XML element street ("13, Coal Street") and the value of its attribute id ("4711-1") to a class structure:

To map XML element street and its attribute id, you need a dedicated class as a container. In this example, this is class StreetElement. XML attribute id of element street is mapped to class attribute id of UML class StreetElement via matching names. The content of the XML element street is mapped to the class attribute that has stereotype <<XMLCharacters>>. In this example this is text_value.
Class StreetElement must have stereotype <<XML>> and tagged value isMixed set to true because it contains the serialized attribute text_value (also see explanation of tagged value isMixed ).

Containter StreetElement is associated to the main address class. The name of the association end (street) must match the name of the XML element. Associated class StreetElement is only a container for the street element and its name is not relevant for the mapping.

If the XML element contains attributes, which should not be mapped to UML class attributes, an association to a base type can be used. The example shows this for element city . The content of the element ("New York, NY 10017, USA") will be available in city (accessible as attribute of the instantiated class Address2Example1). As the id attribute cannot be mapped, it will be discarded when executing xmlToClass() .

If an object of class Address2Example1 was serialized back to a SOAP response, the SOAP message would read:

<address2Example1 xmlns:ns1="urn:Services.URLService.URLPort.DataItems" xsi:type="ns1:Address2Example1">
    <id xsi:type="xsd:string">4711</id>
    <street xsi:type="ns1:StreetElement">
      	<id xsi:type="xsd:string">4711-1</id>
      	<text_value xsi:type="xsd:string">13, Coal Street</text_value>
    </street>
    <city xsi:type="xsd:string">New York, NY 10017, USA</city>
</address2Example1>

The same result could be obtained with the following class diagram:

You have the flexibility to map XML structures in different ways. You can define very compact class diagrams for simple XML structures, but you have also the possibility to map complex XML data structures graphically.

Arrays and XML Serialization

The behavior of XML serialization in this case is not always self-explanatory but a consequence of the definition of arrays in XML schema.

The following table shows the behavior of XML serialization for the following class containing an array:

{
	"aClass" : { "anArray" : ["A1", "A2", "A3"] };
}

<aClass>
    <anArray>A1</anArray>
    <anArray>A2</anArray>
    <anArray>A3</anArray>
</aClass>

<aClass>
    <anArray>A1</anArray>
    <anArray>A3</anArray>
</aClass>

<aClass xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <anArray>A1</anArray>
    <anArray xsi:nil="true"/>
    <anArray>A3</anArray>
</aClass>

<aClass>
</aClass>

<aClass>
</aClass>

<aClass>
</aClass>

<aClass xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <anArray xsi:nil="true"/>
    <anArray xsi:nil="true"/>
    <anArray xsi:nil="true"/>
</aClass>

<anotherClass>
    <anArray>A1</anArray>
	<anArray>A2</anArray>
	<anArray>A3</anArray>
</anotherClass>

<AClassType>
    <anArray>A1</anArray>
	<anArray>A2</anArray>
	<anArray>A3</anArray>
</AClassType>

<aClass>
    <anArray>A1</anArray>
    <anArray>A2</anArray>
    <anArray>A3</anArray>
</aClass>