Adding External XML to a VisualForce DataTable/List - salesforce

Question

I am making an external call to a Server and returning XML (HTTPResponse). I then use a DOM parser to get a list of items.
How can I add the list of items to a DataTable/DataList?
How can I parse the XML structure into a Salesforce structure within the class itself?
Thank you
Hi eyesscream. All is working fine, except one thing. I needed to get deep in XML
Dom.XMLNode rootElement = doc.getRootElement();
for (Dom.XmlNode assets : rootElement.getChildElements()) {
if (assets.getName().trim() == 'models') {
for (Dom.XmlNode asset : assets.getChildElements()) {
if (asset.getName().trim() == 'model') {
for (Dom.XmlNode serial : asset.getChildElements()) {
if (serial.getName().trim() == 'modelNumber') {
text = serial.getText().trim();
allOptons.add(new SelectOption(text, text));
}
}
}
}
}
}
on VF page it duplicates the results. Why?

Answer 1

Go through your XML adding elements to a list of strings of wrapper objects if you need to store more than 1 parameter. Then such list can be assigned to dataTable, pageBlockTable, repeat etc tags without any problems. It's not like these tags work only on standard sObjects.
For a simple list of Strings with checkboxes you don't even need any helper classes.
public class StackXml{
public List<SelectOption> allOptions {get;private set;} // this will hold serial numbers for use in VF page.
// if you wouldn't plan to use VF with checkboxes, simple List<String> would be enough
public List<String> selectedOptions {get;set;}
public StackXml(){
allOptions = new List<SelectOption>();
selectedOptions = new List<String>();
String xmlString = '<serials><serialNumber>ver123</serialNumber><serialNumber>ver456 </serialNumber>' +
'<intrusion>something to prove it will be skipped</intrusion>' +
'<serialNumber>abc007</serialNumber></serials>';
Dom.Document doc = new Dom.Document();
doc.load(xmlString);
Dom.XMLNode rootElement = doc.getRootElement();
for(Dom.XmlNode node : rootElement.getChildElements()){
if(node.getName().trim() == 'serialNumber') {
String text = node.getText().trim();
allOptions.add(new SelectOption(text, text));
}
}
}
public void assign(){}
}
<apex:page controller="StackXml">
<apex:form>
<apex:selectCheckboxes value="{!selectedOptions}" layout="pageDirection">
<apex:selectOptions value="{!allOptions}"/>
</apex:selectCheckboxes>
<apex:commandButton value="Assign" action="{!assign}"/>
</apex:form>
<hr/>
<p>You have selected:</p>
<apex:dataList value="{!selectedOptions}" var="o">{!o}</apex:dataList>
</apex:page>