How does one get the system time in XML? Is there a method/function?

Question

I am using an XML file to store data and parameters which is to be used by a parser, however in that XML I also have to use system time. So, is there any built-in functionality in XML to get system time, perhaps something similar to getTime() in Javascript?

Answer 1

No. XML is not a programming language. It doesn't contain methods that perform actions.

Answer 2

Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML, describes a class of data objects called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]. By construction, XML documents are conforming SGML documents.

XML documents are made up of storage units called entities, which contain either parsed or unparsed data. Parsed data is made up of characters, some of which form character data, and some of which form markup. Markup encodes a description of the document's storage layout and logical structure. XML provides a mechanism to impose constraints on the storage layout and logical structure.

From Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition)

You can get the system from a server side language and build that entity to your XML document.

From javascript you can get the client time which might not be reliable source for any critical data.

Answer 3

If you use XSLT, its possible to call a custom-supplied function to get the time. Is this what you were thinking of ?

So basically, you will transform your xml into another xml before reading it. The transform will add all the time elements.

Answer 4

Why don't you just have the parser insert the current system time?

Answer 5

The following code will help you:

<datetime>
   <date>System.getDate()</date>
   <time>System.getTime()</time>
  <makeXMLAProgrammingLanguage> yes please </makeXMLAProgrammingLanguage>
</datetime>