Xml Parsing in Logic Apps

Hi Readers,

Logic apps enforces json based message data processing, you can relate this concept with the BizTalk Server where xml based data processing standards are being enforced:

Applications	Data Processing Standard
BizTalk	XML
Logic Apps	JSON

In BizTalk, it is very easy to parse json data into xml. There is a built-in pipeline available in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 Edition to implement this, but it gets tricky when you have to do the similar thing in a logic app. I am going to show you an example on how to parse json data into xml in logic apps…

• In my example, I have created a custom API, which returns a list of employee names in a form of json data.

  

• My objective is to create a text file in a blob container with a name of “Sovit.txt” and it should contain the data in the xml form of the above employee names, using a Logic App.

  

• It took a fair amount of time to figure out how to do this and I am sharing this with you to save your precious time.
• I have created a logic app with a name of TestEmployeeApp and it has three easy steps:

  

• First step is a manual trigger, which I will be using to call/trigger this logic app, manually. Second step is an action, that calls a custom api, which returns the employee names data in Json. Third and final step is an action, which will create a file in a Blob container.
• Note: that I have used predefined xml function of WDL, to parse json data into xml.
• Note: In function xml (), you can only give one json property at a time. Multiple json objects or json object with multiple properties cannot be converted in a single go.
• I had three employees to parse, so let’s see how I did it.

  

• The above image is the third step of my logic app, I have created xml data with a root node of “Data” along with the concatenation of xml result of each json object one by one. Please see the highlighted code above.
• ‘concat’ is a string function used to combine all the string values together.
• Note: in the xml function, the input parameter is the single json object from the body of the action ‘Employee_Get’.
• I have used the xml function thrice because I had three json objects to parse. If you have multiple json objects, you can use ‘forEach’ loop to loop over and convert each item to xml using the xml function.
• Finally, I have assigned the output xml data to the body of the action, which creates a file in the blob container with the name “sovit.txt”, See the picture above.
• You can download the complete code through this link http://sovitstorage.blob.core.windows.net/logicappcode/EmployeeXmlParse.txt.
• Let me know if you are facing any issues with xml parsing in logic apps and BizTalk.