>I have invoices in a hierarchical xml format:
>
>

><?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
><invoice>
>    <number>11009</number>
>    <date>20020801</date>
>    <rows>
>        <row>
>            <item>80686001508</item>
>            <quantity>2</quantity>
>        </row>
>        <row>
>            <item>2136861443</item>
>            <quantity>4.5</quantity>
>        </row>
>    </rows>
></invoice>
>

>
>I need to create a vfp dbf file from this file.
>
>I tried
>XMLTOCURSOR('invoice.xml','invoice',512)
>but almost all data is missing from the result cursor.
>
>How to to convert this xml file to a vfp ?
>I need a singe dbf file or separate dbf files.

To use XmlToCursor() you will need some help of XSL Transformation and XML DOM. Check this:

source = CreateObject('MSXML.Domdocument')
source.loadXml(FileToStr('source.xml'))
stylesheet = CreateObject('MSXML.Domdocument')
stylesheet.loadXML(FileToStr('invoice.xsl'))
result = CreateObject('MSXML.Domdocument')
result.validateOnParse = .t.
source.transformNodeToObject(stylesheet, @result)
XMLToCursor(result.xml, 'Invoice')
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This assumes that source.xml is file with the above xml structure and with the invoice data. Invoice.xsl is gile with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no" ?> 
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"/>

<!-- this replaces root tag with VFPData which is required from CursorToXML to work properly -->
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:element name="VFPData">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

<!-- this will denormalize XML data -->
<xsl:template match="/invoice/rows/*">
<xsl:element name="invoice">
<xsl:element name="number"><xsl:value-of select="../../number"/></xsl:element>
<xsl:element name="date"><xsl:value-of select="../../date"/></xsl:element>
<xsl:element name="item"><xsl:value-of select="item"/></xsl:element>
<xsl:element name="quantity"><xsl:value-of select="quantity"/></xsl:element>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

<!-- to ommit nodes data -->
<xsl:template match="text()">
</xsl:template>

<!-- to work over every node -->
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

According to me it is the fastest and simplest approach.

HTH