Introduction
XML files are a great way to publish live data to your Navori QL Players. Navori Data Feed Manager gives you full control over which parts of the XML file or RSS feeds you will show on your screens. Of course, you can create and manage data feeds inside Data Feed Manager using the Server Feed option. But what if you want the data to be managed by someone outside of your company? What if you want to post updates without having to use QL Manager at all? That is when XML comes into play. This document will explore a few scenarios and describe techniques you can use to publish and manage external data directly to your Navori QL Player screens using XML.
Making your XML data available to Navori QL requires two things:
1. An XML File
2. A Webserver
The Basics
XML was created to structure, store, and transport information. The XML format is similar to HTML in that you apply tags to your text with the exception that you invent your own tags. With HTML you can only use predefined tags. Here is an example of a simple XML document:
XML Document
As you can see, the concept is rather simple. The actual content to be displayed is contained between each tag (text) and you can pick any tag name that fit your needs.
Using the example above, Data Feed Manager would read the XML file and show one column for each tagged entry. The more entries in the XML file, the more records will be shown on your QL Player screens. You just need to make sure you are consistent when typing your data in the XML file and close every tag.
It's easy to create an XML file from scratch. You can use Windows Notepad and type in the code yourself. The XML file can be edited at any time and if you publish it to a web server, Navori QL will pick up and display the content automatically.
This is the most efficient way to publish small lists of data outside of Navori QL itself.
In the following example, you can see we added a few more records to our XML file.
XML
This is how the XML file looks once added to the Data Feed Manager in Navori QL.
XML only showing last row? see FAQ: 5378
The Data Feed Manager lists the contents between the XML tags. The tag names become the headers and the contents between the tags are listed in each column.
You may edit the content or add new records then re-publish the XML file to your web server and the updates will be picked up by each QL Player automatically.
Creating and Editing XML Files
Please follow recommendation from W3C:
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_rss.asp
As I mentioned earlier, the simplest way to prepare XML files from scratch is to use Windows Notepad. By writing your content from scratch and keeping the code simple you will get excellent results with Navori QL. Just be sure to close every tag otherwise your XML file will be invalid.
City: the name of the city in this forecast.
Morning: morning temperature.
Afternoon: afternoon temperature
The Item tag is used to delimit each record in the XML file and we open and close the file with the Channel tag. You don't have to call these tags Item or Channel. You can pick your own words. Don't forget the entry at the top of the file the question marks at the beginning and end of this tag indicates this is a comment and it states the XML version used in this file. Now, you don't have to use these same tag names. You can make up your own and if you follow this basic structure, you will end up with a valid XML file.
Publishing your Data
Making your XML data available to Navori QL requires two things:
1. An XML file.
2. A web server.
To publish and update your data feed online, you must save your XML file to a web server (any web server will do).
Once you have configured your new XML feed in QL, you can add the fields to your templates or tickers. To update the contents of these feeds, you update the original XML file on your local PC and then upload it to your web server (overwriting the old file, using the same file name). Your QL Players will load the new content automatically.
Alternative Publishing Methods
Let's say you are managing more than one or two XML data files and you want to automate the update process. We recommend you look at one of the many FTP synchronization tools available on the web.
Example of additional XML Feeds:
Departure XML
Product XML