SAX-attributes object

When the parser encounters the start tag of a new XML element, it knows to call the startElement callback procedure. 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">

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.

Note: The SAX-attributes object is similar to the Attributes interface of the Java Sax2 API.

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.

Table 1. SAX-attributes attribute and method summary
This attribute or method . . . Lets you . . .
NUM-ITEMS attribute See how many attributes the XML element has
GET-INDEX-BY-NAMESPACE-NAME( ) method

GET-INDEX-BY-QNAME( ) method		 Get where on the attribute list a particular attribute resides
GET-LOCALNAME-BY-INDEX( ) method

GET-QNAME-BY-INDEX( ) method

GET-URI-BY-INDEX( ) method		 Get the name of a particular attribute
GET-TYPE-BY-INDEX( ) method

GET-TYPE-BY-NAMESPACE-NAME( ) method

GET-TYPE-BY-QNAME(  ) method		 Get the type of a particular attribute
GET-VALUE-BY-INDEX( ) method

GET-VALUE-BY-NAMESPACE-NAME( ) method

GET-VALUE-BY-QNAME( ) method		 Get the value of a particular attribute
INSERT-ATTRIBUTE( ) method

UPDATE-ATTRIBUE( ) method

REMOVE-ATTRIBUTE( ) method		 Manipulate the attributes in the list
TYPE attribute Get the type of the object (which is always SAX-ATTRIBUTES)
ADM-DATA attribute

HANDLE attribute

INSTANTIATING-PROCEDURE attribute

PRIVATE-DATA attribute

UNIQUE-ID attribute		 Get or set information concerning this particular SAX-attributes object
COPY-SAX-ATTRIBUTES( ) method Copy the contents of the specified SAX-attributes object to this SAX-attributes object

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.

Note: The order of the elements in the SAX-attributes object list might not be the same as the order in which they appear in the document—which is consistent with the SAX2 Java API specification.