Use relative path with spaces in XML Reader

[christina_koeppen]

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to create a workflow to read out all settings of another workflow. So I hopefully get a workflow documentation in a few seconds. I found this topic:

How to write a documentation for a KNIME workflow?

Hey @s.roughley, hey @morebento, after some 6hrs of work (including teaching myself XPath), I achieved a solution. I build a workflow reading a “workflow.knime” file and extracting the nodes and connections. I attached the workflow and some screen shots below. I would be more than happy if some people share their ideas on that with me. Aimed for achievements: Read any given “workflow.knime” file Extract nodes and connections Write a DOCX stub file ** One page per node ** Node ID and Node …

I tried to copy the idea. Therefore I use the XML Reader and the workflow.knime and settings.xml files in my workflow folder. I did it with absolute pathes and everything worked fine. To be more flexible, I want to switch to relative pathes in the XML Reader. Now I have the problem that the XML Reader can’t read a relative path with spaces.

For example:
The absolute path D:\KNIME\Workspaces\WorkflowFolder\MyWorkflow\Column Filter (#5)\settings.xml has some spaces between Column and Filter and between Filter and (#5). The XML Reader works fine with this path.

The relative path knime://LOCAL/WorkflowFolder/MyWorkflow/Column Filter (#5)/settings.xml has also some spaces between Column and Filter and between Filter and (#5). Now I get an error message that there are some illegal characters in the path.

Is there any way that the XML Reader works with spaces as well?

Thanks a lot.
Christina

[s.roughley]

You need to URL-encode the spaces with either ‘%20’ (or ‘+’ might work), so for the url, ‘knime://LOCAL/WorkflowFolder/MyWorkflow/Column Filter (#5)/settings.xml’, you would enter ‘knime://LOCAL/WorkflowFolder/MyWorkflow/Column%20Filter%20(#5)/settings.xml’ - You might also need to URL encode some of the other characters (e.g. ‘(’, ‘#’ and ‘)’) - the above link gives a list.

Alternatively, if you have a big list of settings.xml and workflow.knime files to read in a table, use the ‘Load text-based files’ node from the @Vernalis community contribution:

Load text-based files

Followed by XML to String.

Steve

[AlexanderFillbrunn]

Hi Christina,
in the case of knime:// paths KNIME treats this as a URI, a special kind of path. Can you try it with knime://LOCAL/WorkflowFolder/MyWorkflow/Column%20Filter%20(#5)/settings.xml? The %20 is the encoded value of SPACE for URIs.
Kind regards
Alexander

[christina_koeppen]

That works! I have to use %20 for space and %23 for # and now everything is fine.

Thank you very much!