SAX-attributes object

>When the parser encounters the start tag of a new XML element, it knows to call the startElement callback procedure or method. At this time, the parser creates a SAX-attributes object and passes it to the startElement callback as an input parameter. Thus, when you define your startElement callback, you define the name of the parameter that holds the handle to this automatically created object and this is how your callback can access the attributes of the XML element.

For example, suppose the parser encounters an XML start tag that has one or more attributes, such as:

<Customer name="John Smith" id="2543">

METHOD PUBLIC VOID StartElement(
      INPUT namespaceURI AS CHARACTER,
      INPUT localName AS CHARACTER,
      INPUT  qName AS CHARACTER,
      INPUT attributes AS HANDLE): 

...
END METHOD.

PROCEDURE StartElement:
  DEFINE INPUT PARAMETER namespaceURI AS CHARACTER.
  DEFINE INPUT PARAMETER localName    AS CHARACTER.
  DEFINE INPUT PARAMETER qName        AS CHARACTER.
  DEFINE INPUT PARAMETER attributes   AS HANDLE.
  ...
END PROCEDURE.

For more information on StartElement callback procedure or method, see StartElement.

The parser creates and populates the StartElement callback attributes parameter with information on the XML element's attributes. In the example, name and id are attributes. The attributes parameter is a handle to a SAX-attributes object.

For most basic use cases, you will be working with this automatically created SAX-attributes object. For information on programmatically creating your own SAX-attributes object, see Create a SAX-attributes object.

The following table summarizes the attributes and methods of the SAX-attributes object. For complete reference entries, see ABL Reference.

A SAX-attributes object represents the complete collection of all the attributes for a given element. No matter how many attributes an element has, the StartElement callback gets passed only one SAX-attributes handle.