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ABAP Keyword Documentation →  ABAP - Reference →  Data Interfaces and Communication Interfaces →  ABAP and XML →  Transformations for XML →  asXML - Canonical XML Representation 

asXML - General Format

The following lines show the general format of the canonical XML representation without the XML header; line breaks and indents are included for clarification purposes only.

The asXML format is a general format that cannot be completely defined with an XML pattern. The reason for this is that various ABAP types are referred to.

<asx:abap version = "1.0"
          xmlns:asx = "http://www.sap.com/abapxml">
  <asx:values>
    <bn1>...</bn1>
    <bn2>...</bn2>
    ...
  </asx:values>
  <asx:heap>
    ...
  </asx:heap>
</asx:abap>

The root element is abap in the namespace (XML namespace) http://www.sap.com/abapxml. The optional attribute version currently always has the value "1.0" and is intended for future enhancements of asXML. The root element abap must contain the subelement values of the same namespace. The subelements bn1, bn2 ... of values represent the ABAP data objects specified in the addition source of the statement CALL TRANSFORMATION as e1 e2 ... or in the addition result as f1 f2 ... The names of the elements bn1, bn2, ... are the names specified there in uppercase. The contents of the elements <bn1>...</bn1>, <bn2>...</bn2> ... (or <bn1 ... />, <bn2 ... /> ...) represent the content of named data objects (except for reference variables) in accordance with the mapping described in the following sections. Reference variables are represented by elements without text content but with a special attribute. The optional element heap contains the contents of referenced anonymous data objects and objects.

The format of the names of the elements bn1, bn2 ... is determined by their format in the ABAP runtime environment, with the exception of the special cases in the table below. When names are specified statically in the additions source and resultof the statement CALL TRANSFORMATION, they are specified in uppercase letters. When specified dynamically in an internal table, the format depends on how the names are specified in the table.

The names specified in the statement CALL TRANSFORMATION (or components of structures or objects) can only be used as names for XML elements if they contain only the characters "a" to "z", "A" to "Z", "0" to "9", or "", with the first character being a letter or "". Other characters are replaced in accordance with the following table.

Character in ABAP Name Escape Character in XML Name
ASCII characters other than "a" to "z", "A" to "Z", "0" to "9", or "_" and characters "0" to "9" as the first character. "_--hex(c)", where hex(c) is the two-character hexidecimal representation of the ASCII code for the character c.
"/" "_-"
"XML" as the first three characters in any combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. "X-ML" in the appropriate combination of uppercase and lowercase letters.

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54