ACS: Force aXML file to include null item attributes
We have a custom interface that uses Agile Content Service (events, subscribers, destinations) to send item records, upon release, to be synced with the associated records in EBS. The subscriber includes an Item Filter that sends the Affected Items’ latest released records to the interface destination in aXML format.
PROBLEM: Everything works as expected except for when a previously released (and synced with EBS) item is redlined in Agile to remove all values from an attribute. Upon release – everything else syncs correctly to the EBS record, but the field that was nullified in Agile remains populated in EBS as it was before.
CAUSE: The aXML file is only including attributes with populated data.
This is a big problem for us as it creates a discrepancy between the item records in Agile and EBS.
QUESTION: Is there any way to force the aXML file to include all item attributes (even if NULL)?
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
DannyPitt
I never did find anything useful on this. We have a temporary workaround (manual update in EBS) when a field is redlined to null from Agile.
Long term solution might be to populate some specific dummy value (rather than nullify completely) – and then program the interface to remove existing values on the EBS side if the dummy value is sent from Agile. Still not ideal as this over-complicates things for fields that are okay to be null, but might be necessary in order to maintain data integrity between Agile & EBS records.
You can do a XSL transformation on the extracted agile.xml. The output format will be another XML, which will contain blank tags for the attributes which are missing in the agile.xml due for being blank.
