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Device events have a prefix workplace.device.<name>.event. while alien2xml node definitions have a prefix node.

Contents 1 Examples 2 Node/Event 3 Properties 4 Other special features

Examples

Example (alien2xml):

 targetService = dbus2dirq
 
 rootNode = product
 
 node.product = .*
 node.product.version = 1.0
 node.product.version.order = 1
 node.product.md5sum = <internal:md5sum>
 node.product.md5sum.order = 2
 node.product.status = imported
 node.product.status.order = 3
 node.product.header = <node:header=[[0:95]]>
 node.product.header.order = 4
 node.product.parts = <node:parts=[[95:]]>
 node.product.parts.order = 5
 
 node.header = .*
 node.header.id = [[0:15]]
 node.header.id.pattern.1 = " +$"
 node.header.id.replace.1 = ""
 node.header.model = [[15:6]]
 node.header.model.pattern.1 = " +$"
 node.header.model.replace.1 = ""
 node.header.productionYear = [[21:4]]
 node.header.custSequence = [[25:11]]
 node.header.custSequence.pattern.1 = "^0+"
 node.header.custSequence.replace.1 = ""
 node.header.lineCustomer = [[36:2]]
 node.header.fCode = [[38:20]]
 node.header.ownCarNumber = [[58:7]]
 node.header.ownCarNumber.pattern.1 = "^0+"
 node.header.ownCarNumber.replace.1 = ""
 node.header.lineInternal = [[65:2]]
 node.header.ownSequence = [[67:5]]
 node.header.ownSequence.pattern.1 = "^0+"
 node.header.ownSequence.replace.1 = ""
 node.header.company = [[72:3]]
 node.header.plant = [[75:3]]
 node.header.vin = [[78:17]]
 node.header.vin.pattern.1 = " +$"
 node.header.vin.replace.1 = ""
 
 node.parts = .*
 node.parts.part = [[:]]
 node.parts.part.list_member = ".{19}"
 node.parts.part.regex = "(.*[^ ]) *"
 
 Debug = true

Example input:

 0913VWPO010    POLO  200900000008584032000110101100010003000098550300111010000VW POLO          CUST TEST 02       CUST-BOM100        CUST-T-0815        CUST-T-4712        CUST-TEST07

Example output:

 <!DOCTYPE product>
 <product>
 <version>1.0</version>
 <md5sum>9790ca185475123b074c2c83bc522172</md5sum>
 <status>imported</status>
 <header>
   <company>010</company>
   <custsequence>8584</custsequence>
   <fcode>20001101011000100030</fcode>
   <id>0913VWPO010</id>
   <linecustomer>03</linecustomer>
   <lineinternal>03</lineinternal>
   <model>POLO</model>
   <owncarnumber>9855</owncarnumber>
   <ownsequence>111</ownsequence>
   <plant>000</plant>
   <productionyear>2009</productionyear>
   <vin>VW POLO</vin>
 </header>
 <parts>
   <part>CUST TEST 02</part>
   <part>CUST-BOM100</part>
   <part>CUST-T-0815</part>
   <part>CUST-T-4712</part>
   <part>CUST-TEST07</part>
 </parts>
 </product>

Node/Event

The first condition for node (or event) to be created is this:

node.<node_name> = <regex>

If the input (alien input or raw device input) doesn't match the regex, any other definition rules are ignored and an empty XML element node_name (or no event) is generated. If the regex contains a group (enclosed in a parenthesis pair), the whole input is reduced to this group substring for later processing.

Properties

The node (or event) can contain any number of properties (these properties appear as subelements in alien2xml output). The definition of a property is as follows:

node.<node_name>.<property_name> = _text_

or

node.<node_name>.<property_name> = <node:_subnode_=_text_>

where _text_ is a text constant with any number of [[from:length]] input substring expressions. Input substring expression defines a substring of original input (or input reduced by any regex group definitions). Omitted from means index 0, omitted length means the rest of the input.

When <node:_subnode_=_text_> is used as a value, it tells alien2xml processor that this property is a subnode and should be expanded by using appropriate node._subnode_ definition while using _text_ as the input.

When an item

node.<node_name>.<property_name>.list_member = <regex>

is present in the definition, the property is considered to be a list of values. For PLC Device events it means the list members have keys <property_name>[_index_] where _index_ is a zero-based autoincremented integer. On the other hand, Alien2XML generates multiple subelements with the same name <property_name>. The input (or reduced input) is searched for any occurrences of <regex> - each matched substring is then used as the content of single list member. If there is a regex group present in <regex> the list member content is reduced to appropriate group match.

When an item

node.<node_name>.<property_name>.regex = <regex>

is present in the definition, it means the above value is assigned to property only if the input matches the regex <regex>, otherwise it is assigned an empty value. Additionally, the current input is further reduced to any regex group if present (only for the purpose of assigning to that property).

Other special features

node.product.item1.translate.word = slovo

Content substring replacement:

node.product.item2.pattern.1st_rule = "to\s*be\s*replaced"
node.product.item2.replace.1st_rule = replacement
node.product.item2.pattern.2nd_rule = "this\s*should\s*be\s*replaced as well"
node.product.item2.replace.2nd_rule = replacement2

Enforcing element order in generated XML:

node.product.item1.order = 1
node.product.item2.order = 2

Internal alien2xml variables can be referred to as follows:

node.product.m5sum = <internal:md5sum>

As of now, these internal variables are available:

Internal variables

md5sum	MD5 sum of input
now	Current date and time in format yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.zzz
timestamp	miliseconds since epoch
service	Name of Alien2XML service
target_service	Name of the target service
passed_caller	Caller id passed in this request
passed_id	Message ID passed in this request