General Data Types

The following data types are used throughout this document:

boolean

Simple "yes" or "no". Note: Do not use "true" or "false"; most standard XML formats also use "yes" and "no" (e.g., XSL and XML itself).

CDATA

Random data, possibly containing forbidden XML characters. Within a <![CDATA[ ... ]]> section, any character combination can occur, except the sequence ]]>. CDATA can only occur as element content, not as an attribute value, hence the following is not allowed:

<Element attribute="<![CDATA[ value ]]>">

CDATA sections are used for textual data without a fixed format, possibly containing forbidden XML characters, or HTML data within an XML document (HTML is usually not well-formed XML). See also text and string.

country id

2-letter ISO country identifier, i.e., "nl", "be", "us", "gb", etc.

currency

A 3-letter currency symbol like "EUR", "USD".

date

Date values; the safest format is 'yyyy/mm/dd': 2001/01/03 (January 3rd 2001). Do not use US or European notation (i.e., 'mm/dd/yyyy' and 'dd/mm/yyyy'), since these are ambiguous. See also time and datetime (esp. for literal values).

datetime

Combined date and time value: 'yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm[:ss]'.

There are also several literal values available:

On Saturday, Sunday and Monday "previous" is Friday, on other days, this will be yesterday. Holidays are not accounted for.

now		Current date and time
today-start		Current date, 0:00:00
today-end		Current date, 23:59:59
yesterday-start		Yesterday, 0:00:00
yesterday-end		Yesterday, 23:59:59
previous-start		Previous working day, 0:00:00
previous-end		Previous working day, 23:59:59

Literal dates are only used for input values; return dates are always explicit.

Note 1 For date-start and date-end, the values 'today', 'yesterday' and 'previous' are also allowed, and these result in their *-start and *-end counterparts listed above, depending on their position.

Note 2 Dates without a time will result in 00:00:00, (or 23:59:59 for date-end).

decimal

A floating point number; the decimal placeholder is ".": 1.25. Do not use a thousands separator ("," for US numbering, i.e., 1,000.00). For input values both "1000.00" and "1000,00" are accepted. See also money and integer.

exchange

3-letter sequences like AEX, LSE, FSE, NYS.

indication id

Indicator identifier, i.e.,

(no value)		Trade
+		Trade & Bid
-		Trade & Ask
A		Advised
B		Bid
BB		Best Bid
BO		Best Order
L		Ask (Dutch 'laat')
M		Mid price
V		Temporary

integer

A whole number, i.e., without decimals and usually also positive: 25. See also decimal and string.

language id

ISO language identifier, such as "nl", "en", "fr" and "nl-be" (Flemish). Length is either 2 or 5 characters.

money

A floating point number; specifically used for currencies. See also decimal.

string

Random attribute data. Examples are "this", "he's", 'she said: "what"' and 'don&apo;t'; the ampersand can be typed as &amp;. Attribute values also cannot contain the characters < and > (use &lt; and &gt;). Spaces will be collapsed, i.e.,  a  b will be transformed to a b. See also text.

text

Plain character data; no <, > or & allowed (except as &lt;, &gt; or &amp;). See also string and CDATA.

ticker

Value depends on the associated ticker type. TBMALFA tickers are 10-character strings, usually based on the original exchange symbol; TBM codes are usually strings of 15 characters, ISIN codes are 12 character strings like "NL0000370161".

ticker type

Ticker classification. See Supported Ticker Codes.

time

Time values; 'hh:mm[:ss]', e.g., 23:15. See also date and datetime.

xpath expression

An XPath expression like //News/Article[@id='1307']