Avoid deletion of empty elements in custom BOD

Is there in MT a way to avoid that empty nodes/elements are removed from a custom(ised) BOD?

A receiving system requires also empty nodes in the BOD we send from M3. But in the partner agreement in M3/MeC it is not longer possible to check the checkbox to do so.

We could make it a none-BOD integration or add "missing" nodes back in an ION data mapping but I would like to avoid that extra work and am hoping there is a better way
(Something like how we can add control properties in Eclipse MeC Mapper to end up in partner agreement for custom BODs - or the used schema with min/max occurrences would steer it).

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Accepted answers

Maxime Richard

Hello,

As far as i know, this is not possible for the moment.

As a workaround, could you fill the empty tag with a special value (XYZ) and then apply a XSLT mapping in ION that would loop through all nodes and replace XYZ with ' ' ?

fredericlebars

Hello,

We have done this with python in CE.

Fred

Nichlas Karlsson

Hi,

From April (2025.04) it is possible to create BOD agreements manually, like you do in on-prem. You can for example create a BOD agreement using a standard BOD mapping, but you set the properties for XML Transform manually, for example not selecting "Delete empty elements during transformation":

Select Document Type = BOD for the Send process:

The BOD message will be sent to the m3 connection point in ION as usual.

With this setup you will use the standard BOD mapping, or a custom BOD mapping if you like, without deleting empty elements.

You can still use "Extensibility 3" to create custom BODs, but you don't need to use the generated agreement, which use the same setup as for standard BOD agreements. This logic will not change, as you now have the possibility to create BOD agreements manually.

I'm curious which applications don't handle empty elements. BOD is XML, and if you receive XML messages you should use an XML parser, where you specify which elements and attributes you want to read from the XML document via XPaths. Even if you stream through the XML document, you need to keep track of the XPaths. I don't see why it matters if an empty element is given or not. Maybe the application doesn't use XPaths but reads the XML document as a regular text file?

/Nichlas

Nichlas Karlsson

If you want to create a custom BOD and automatically generate a custom BOD agreement you have to name the custom BOD mapping correctly. It has worked in this way since this functionality was introduced, I don't remember when but not since the beginning of M3CE. This is internally called "Extensibility 3". This functionality has not changed in 2025.04, when new functionality to set up custom BOD agreements manually was introduced (a.k.a. "Extensibility 4"). So this is not a bug.

You can implement a custom BOD using "Extensibility 3" and not use the generated agreement (which is inactive as default) but set up a manual agreement instead.

"Extensibility 3" will not change, the generated BOD agreements follow our standards for standard BOD agreements. If you want to set up the BOD agreement differently, for example to not delete empty elements (a common requirement), you have to set up a BOD agreement manually, as you do for on-prem.

/Nichlas

All comments

Maxime Richard

Hello,

As far as i know, this is not possible for the moment.

As a workaround, could you fill the empty tag with a special value (XYZ) and then apply a XSLT mapping in ION that would loop through all nodes and replace XYZ with ' ' ?

fredericlebars

Hello,

We have done this with python in CE.

Fred

Nichlas Karlsson

Hi,

Select Document Type = BOD for the Send process:

The BOD message will be sent to the m3 connection point in ION as usual.

With this setup you will use the standard BOD mapping, or a custom BOD mapping if you like, without deleting empty elements.

/Nichlas

JuanSz

Thanks Nichlas! I will try this option once it is there.

Regards your comment on applications that do not handle empty elements: in this case the message did not reach the application as the API gateway (I believe it was MuleSoft) already rejected the API POST-call as it did XSD schema validation of the message to protect backend systems; and all elements in XML had a min occurrence of 1.

Another example I came across a couple months: a 3rd party middleware wanted to transform the custom BOD without use of schema into a flat file; missing elements corrupted the file. And yes even applications that processed XML as string. Last two definitely not best-practice but when building integrations you come across these things - out there in the wild.

JuanSz

Thanks Maxime and Fred. I ended up making XLST mapping in ION adding the "missing" elements. But I will next month the option Nichlas provided.

CWRIGHT

Hi Juan,

It's likely you've got a solution already but i'll drop a few thoughts. Undoubtably Nichlas is the best long term option when the feature is available, and a quick XSLT or Python script with hardcoding would also do the job and be quick to implement.

A few years ago I built a dataflow that pulled associated schema of a message from Data Catalogs using IONSERVICES/datacatalog/v1/noun/{Noun}/xsd. The dataflow then validated the message against the schema and automatically rejected it if it was invalid. We used the merge scripting functionality in dataflows for this The idea was to prevent bad data from even getting to MEC.

You could use a similar approach here in a Python script, find mandatory elements in the schema and if they aren't present in the message, add them as blank.

Obviously it's quite a bit of work to do this, but would be more future proof than adding the blank elements manually in XSLT/Python.

JuanSz

Thanks Callum. And the good thing about your solution is that it a generic solution; I now had to make 10 XSLT mappings as there were 10 messages to be send.

Maxime Richard

Hi Nichlas,

It seems that you can create a BOD flow in M3CE (BOD Processor, BOD mapping with java routine to build outbox…document flow with BOD document) and give IEC mapping a name that does not follow Infor's recommandations (xxx_MyNoun_Sync_Out_yyy for example for outgoing message). If so, no agreement is automatically created and you have to build it manually (allowing then to let "Delete empty elements" not ticked).

Is this behaviour working as design since April 2025 release or is it working like this from the beginning of M3CE ? Or is it a bug ? Thanks.

Nichlas Karlsson

You can implement a custom BOD using "Extensibility 3" and not use the generated agreement (which is inactive as default) but set up a manual agreement instead.

/Nichlas

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