how can I convert an xml to cdt... and I want to use it directly in a rule... ..

thank you but as you can see it metioned "The result of this function is not automatically saved into the process variable passed in the type parameter. You must store the result of this function into a process variable."
which I mean to evaluate automatically without storing the result...

or is there xml to json smart service? that would solve it as well...

Have you made sure that the namespace is correctly matched? The best way is to use TOXML() function on the CDT so you get the XML representation of the CDT and ensure that your XML maps to this structure.

thanks but that's not the issue...

Can you explain why this statement is a concern for your use case? "The result of this function is not automatically saved into the process variable " this is mentioned in the documentation just for users not to think that the data is directly saved, this warning is just a reminder that if you want to store the output to a variable you have to do it the same way you do it with other expressions: using a custom output or node input mapped to a variable.

I use a string (xml format) which is returned by callling webserivce by httpget().
I would like to directly convert it to CDT.
using torecord() I realised torecord() must be used inside a process and have reference to datatype.
I would like to know if there is a way to convert it directly in a function?

We have the same requirement, i dont want to create a acp/pv of CDT type. So without explicity having ACP/PV can we direclty convert the xml code to CDT.

Note: We are doing this conversion in SAIL

Solution to directly convert without creating ACP/PV,
torecord(XMLText,'type!testCDT'()), here 1st parameter would be your XML variable and 2nd parameter would be the CDT type.
Thanks!

I tried your solution but I get this:

There was an error testing the rule:

Expression evaluation error at function 'torecord' parameter 2: Invalid function 'type!ArrayOfDPEntity' due to invalid type