XFA Specification
Chapter 13, Dealing with Data in Different XML Formats
Extended Mapping Rules
386
Specification” on page 676
for the full schema. When this element is provided and is non-empty, records
with indices not included in the list are not processed. Hence the mere existence of the list reverses the
default behavior. The behavior specified by the XFA Configuration DOM overrides the default behavior for
the entire XML data document.
The content of the
range
element must be a comma-separated list of record numbers and/or record
number ranges, where:
●
A record number is a positive base ten integer specifying a record index that is to be included in the set.
The index of the first record in the XML data document is 0, of the second is 1, and so on.
A record number range is a positive base ten integer followed by a hyphen character (
"-"
) followed by
another positive base ten integer, specifying a range of record indices that are to be included in the set.
The range includes the two numbers given. The two integers may be in either order, smallest-first or
largest-first.
●
All records with indices in the set are processed. The set of indices may extend beyond the index of the last
record in the XML data document (indeed it is expected that this will frequently be the case).
Use of this mapping rule does not affect the order in which records are processed, only which ones are
included. Therefore the order of processing will be the same as described elsewhere in this specification.
The record Element
This section describes an extended mapping rule to nominate the data group elements within the
document range that represent records.
By default, as described in
“Record Elements” on page 126,
the data loader considers the document range
to include one record of data represented by the first data group. This data handling option provides a
mechanism for controlling the partitioning of the document into one or more records by nominating data
group elements where partitioning occurs. The extent of the document range is not affected by record
elements, rather the content within the document range is partitioned by record elements.
Notionally a record is a complete logical unit, which the application processes separately. For example a
tax department collects tax returns from many individuals. All of the tax returns could be expressed as a
single large XML data document with each individual return comprising one record. The division of a
document into records may have side-effects in the way they are processed by the XFA application. It is
expected that the application will process records sequentially and separately. For example, it is common
to sequentially merge each record with a template, then lay out and print the merged record before
moving on to the next record. In this operation the output for each record starts on a new page, even if
there is space remaining on the last page of the previous record. In addition, portions of the XFA Data DOM
that lie outside any record may passively supply data but in this operation do not force any output to
occur.
The XFA Configuration DOM may include a
record
element that overrides the default behavior. See
“Config Specification” on page 676
DOM overrides the default behavior for the entire XML data document.
The
record
element nominates
dataGroup
nodes, which are marked as records by setting their
isRecord
properties to
true
. The content of the
record
element must be either a node level or an
element type, where:
A node level is an integer that specifies the level in the XML data DOM hierarchy for which the data loader
is required to mark each corresponding
dataGroup
node in the XFA Data DOM as a record. The node level