Feb 07, 2017

We know that all the data provided in a Repeating Section is stored in a field. In effect, you are storing many records of tabular data into one single field. For this to happen, Nintex converts the data into XML format. It’s the best resolution because it is text based and has the potential to be read back into a table.

Now if you have a list that already contains some repeating section XML data and would like to read it into a new form then by just adding a repeating section with an appropriate structure to the new form you will not be able to get the data. What you’d see is the XML text in one of its fields.

When the repeating section creates XML text, the tag names would be the names of the controls contained in the repeating section. If you don’t bother giving names to these controls then their GUID would be used, like this;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RepeaterData><Version /><Items><Item>
<_x0033_91bda1d-2631-4c9f-a2f7-1aa9252cc6f6 type="System.DateTime">09/20/2016></_x0033_91bda1d-2631-4c9f-a2f7-1aa9252cc6f6>
<bbd1f6eb-b216-4cd9-94e7-080716693e57 type="System.String">Cyrus</bbd1f6eb-b216-4cd9-94e7-080716693e57>
</Item></Items></RepeaterData>

Here we have a Date control and a Single line of text control, none of which have names however if I name the first one MyDate and second one MyText then the XML would look like this;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RepeaterData><Version /><Items><Item>
<MyDate type="System.DateTime">;09/20/2016</MyDate>
<MyText type="System.String">Cyrus</MyText>
</Item><Item></RepeaterData>

This naming is important because, if you create a similar repeating section control in a different form and name, it controls the same names as the tags appearing in the XML then the data from the list will be correctly populated inside the form controls. Otherwise, you won’t be able to read the data in and this is the trick you need to follow.

Hope this has helped! For more information, take a look at New Horizons' Nintex training courses.