The TypeInfo class

The base.TypeInfo class creates a DOM node from a structured program variable.

You can use this class to do program variables introspection, in order to get the data type names and values in a DOM node, that can be traversed with the XML utility classes, or to be serialized in a file for export purpose.

The base.TypeInfo class does not have to be instantiated: you can directly use the create() method.

A serialized DOM node created by base.TypeInfo class looks for example as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"? encoding="ISO-8859-1">
<Record>
  <Field type="INTEGER" value="234" name="key"/>
  <Field type="CHAR(20)" value="Johnson" name="lastname"/>
  <Field type="DATE" value="12/24/1962" name="birthdate"/>
</Record>
Steps to use the class:
  • Define a variable with the om.DomNode type.
  • Create a DOM node with base.TypoInfo.create( var ) and assign it to the DOM node variable.
  • Use the created DOM node.

For example, to convert a list of database records to XML, fetch rows from a database table in a structured array, specify the array as the input parameter for the base.TypeInfo.create() method to create a new base.DomNode object, and serialize the resulting DOM node to a file by using the node.writeXml() method. You can then pass the resulting file to any application that is able to read XML for input.

Note: Consider using the JSON interface to serialize and deserialize program variables.