Creating ordered elements in XML

Jim Kring — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:00:51 +0000

XML doesn't inherently support element ordering. So, if you have XML that looks like this (below), you can't deterministically say that the element with "foo" data comes before element with "bar" data.

   foo

   bar

   monkey

   fish

You can get around this XML limitation by explicitly adding an order/index attribute to your ordered elements. For example:

   foo

   bar

   monkey

   fish

In order to work with data like this, you'll need to pre-populate the "n" attribute before you generate the XML (iterating over the elements and setting the "n" attribute) and you'll need to post-process the "n" attribute after you parse the XML (iterating over the elements to get the "n" attribute and reordering the elements appropriately).

Here's a LabVIEW example that demonstrates this technique (note that this example uses JKI's EasyXML library):

For more tips and tricks for using XML in LabVIEW, and EasyXML in particular, visit the EasyXML Tips and Tricks page on the JKI Software website.

Thinking in G » EasyXML

Creating ordered elements in XML