How to receive and process XML data in a ThingWorx service (via external SAP API call)?

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
November 26, 2025
2 replies
1508 views

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a use case where our SAP team wants to send data to ThingWorx via an HTTP API call. They will post the data as XML, and ThingWorx should receive it in a service, parse it, and store the information in a DataTable or Dataset.

However, I’m not sure how to receive the XML payload properly inside a ThingWorx service. When SAP calls my service endpoint, I don’t see any way to directly access the raw XML content — it’s either not recognized or comes as an empty input parameter.

What’s the correct approach to handle this in ThingWorx?

Specifically:

How can I receive XML from an external system in a ThingWorx service?

Do I need to configure a specific Content-Type header (like application/xml)?

If anyone has done SAP → ThingWorx integration with XML payloads, I’d really appreciate an example or best-practice recommendation.

Thanks in advance!

Best answer by PEHOWE

Hello @MA8731174 ,
I have reviewed your issue with the Support team.
It appears that when the XML is input into ThingWorx it is being parsed. This parse is what is causing the issue. One solution would be to have the source encode the XML. You have indicated that is not an acceptable solution.

A work around would be to construct a JSON which contains the XML.
One method of doing this would be to create a Micro Service which accepts the XML and performs the encoding of Percent and then pass the value ThingWorx.

I have an export of the testing services from POSTMAN, and ThingWorx export of the thing used in our testing. I will be attaching them to a separate post

Please let me know if you have any questions

Regards,

Pehowe

M

MA8731174

Author

16-Pearl

We solved it by setting the Content-Type to text/xml and accept text/xmland creating a ThingWorx service with an input parameter content of type XML.

In the REST API call, I added the flag ?postParameter=content — and now the XML payload from SAP is correctly received inside the service.

M

MA8731174

Author

16-Pearl

I am facing another issue now while processing the XML payload received from SAP. There are several tags (around 4–5) that contain the % character. When these tags include the % sign, the request fails with an “unable to parse XML request” error.

I am already sending the correct headers: