XML File
- 3 minutes to read
The Dashboard Designer provides the capability to connect to multiple types of data stores using the Data Source wizard. You can also use data access API to connect to the data store and select the required data in code.
This tutorial describes how to establish a connection to an XML data file and select the required data.
Note
The Dashboard Designer has built-in support for XML files and does not require a specific data provider to be installed on the client machine. The XML file should be compatible with the DataSet Relational Structure and includes the XSD schema that describes the document structure.
Creating a Data Source in the Data Source Wizard
To connect to the XML file in the Dashboard Designer, perform the following steps.
Click the New Data Source button in the Data Source ribbon tab.
On the first page of the invoked Data Source Wizard dialog, select Database and click Next.
On the next page, select the XML file data provider and specify the required connection parameters.
Database
Specifies the path to the XML file that contains the required data. To locate the XML file, click the ellipsis button next to the Database field.
After you have specified the required connection parameters, click Next and select the required data using Query Builder by clicking the Run Query Builder… button.
Finally, click Finish to create the data source.
Creating a Data Source in Code
To create a data source that uses a connection to the XML data file, create the instance of the DashboardSqlDataSource class and perform the following steps.
Specify connection parameters to the XML file. Create the XmlFileConnectionParameters class object and set the XmlFileConnectionParameters.FileName property to specify the path to the file that contains the required data.
Assign the resulting XmlFileConnectionParameters object to the SqlDataSource.ConnectionParameters property.
Note
As an alternative, you can add a connection string with required parameters to the application configuration file. Then, assign the connection string name to the SqlDataSource.ConnectionName property.
Select the required data by specifying the query. To do this, use the SelectQuery object that allows you to specify a set of tables/columns, which form a SELECT statement when executing a query.
Add the created query to the SqlDataSource.Queries collection exposed by the DashboardSqlDataSource object.
- Add the created DashboardSqlDataSource object to the Dashboard.DataSources collection.
The following code snippet shows how to supply the dashboard with data from the Northwind XML file.
using DevExpress.DashboardCommon;
using DevExpress.DataAccess.ConnectionParameters;
using DevExpress.DataAccess.Sql;
// ...
XmlFileConnectionParameters xmlParams = new XmlFileConnectionParameters();
xmlParams.FileName = @"..\..\Data\nwind.xml";
DashboardSqlDataSource xmlDataSource = new DashboardSqlDataSource("Data Source 1", xmlParams);
SelectQuery selectQuery = SelectQueryFluentBuilder
.AddTable("Products")
.SelectColumns("ProductName", "UnitPrice")
.Build("Query 1");
xmlDataSource.Queries.Add(selectQuery);
xmlDataSource.Fill();
dashboard.DataSources.Add(xmlDataSource);