Provisioning Reference Guide › SPML Service › SPML Service Configuration › Using Velocity Templates › Data Transformations

Data Transformations

SPML Templating offers several routines for manipulating data from a unique or proprietary format into the format required by the SPML Service which is generally the same as the standard XML Schema Data Types (see http://www.w3.org/tr/xmlschema-2 for more information). These tools are provided by the Velocity Tools project which is in the SPML Requesting Authority classpath and therefore available for reference in your SPML Template.

SPML Manager, SPML Feed, and Requesting Authority.

Useful tools for manipulating and transforming data inside of your SPML Template include the following:

• Date Tool: A tool for manipulating and formatting dates.
• Math Tool: A tool for performing floating point math.
• Number Tool: A tool for formatting numbers.
• Iterator Tool: A tool to use with #foreach loops. It wraps a list to let the designer specify a condition to terminate the loop, and reuse the same list in different loops.
• Render Tool: A tool to evaluate and render arbitrary strings of VTL (Velocity Template Language).

The templating system loads data from XML and CSV files in string format. You can use these tools to convert data in your template to the type required for the operation you want to perform with the data.