Announcing the Public Preview of the new XML Compose and Parse with schema actions

Why XML?

XML is widely used in a variety of industries due to its versatility and complex data structuring capabilities. Some major industries that use XML:

• Financial: XML is used for the exchange of financial data, such as SWIFT messages for international banking transactions and various financial reporting standards.
• Healthcare: XML is used in healthcare for data exchange standards such as HL7, which facilitates the sharing of clinical and administrative data between healthcare providers.
• Supply chain: XML is used in supply chain management for data exchange, such as the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standard.
• Government: Many government agencies use XML for a variety of data management and reporting tasks.
• Legal: XML is used in the legal industry to organize and manage documents, making information easier to find and manage.

To provide ongoing support to customers in these industries, Microsoft has always provided robust capabilities for integration with XML workloads. For example, XML was a top priority for BizTalk Server. Even though the JSON format is now widespread, we continue to work to make Azure Logic Apps the best alternative for BizTalk Server customers and customers with XML-based workloads.

XML Action Connector

We recently added two operations to the XML Operations Connector: Parse to Schema and Write to Schema. With this addition, Logic Apps customers can now interact with the token selector during design time. Tokens are generated from a customer-provided XML schema. As a result, XML documents and the properties they contain can be easily accessed, created, and manipulated in workflows.

Parse XML with Schema

XML parsing using schema allows customers to parse XML data using XSD files (XML schema files). The XSD file must be uploaded to your Logic App schema artifact or integration account. Once the upload is complete, you will need to enter the XML content, schema source, and schema file name. XML content can be provided inline or selected from previous actions in the workflow using a token selector.

Based on the provided XML schema, the following tokens can be used for subsequent actions when saving a workflow:

In the output, the Body field contains a wrapper ‘json’ property, so additional properties such as parsing warning messages can be provided in addition to the translated XML content. If you want to ignore the additional properties, you can select the ‘json’ property instead.

You can also select tokens for each individual attribute in the XML document. This is because these tokens are generated from the provided XML schema.

Writing XML with Schema

Authoring XML using schema allows customers to generate XML data using XSD files. The XSD file must be uploaded to your Logic App schema artifact or integration account. Once the upload is complete, you will need to select the XSD file while entering the JSON root element or input XML schema element. JSON input elements are dynamically generated based on the XML schema you select.

You can also switch to an array and pass an entire array for customers and an array for orders.

Please watch the following video for a full demo of this new feature:

In cooperation with @David_Burg.