How to generate XML from XSD?

Are you trying to generate the smallest possible XML file that is valid against the schema ?

What should be generated if the schema allow an element to appear 0..n times ?

Perhaps this could be of interest:
http://www.sun.com/software/xml/developers/instancegenerator/

Apparently the tool only supports a subset of XML Schema.

Hello!

Thanks for your reply!

I guess you think this is a bit stupid then? Perhaps I should reconsider my approach!

How would you attack this problem:

You should dynamically generate a XML-structure with Java. For this task you got a XSD-file describing the XML-structure.

Would you:
1) Manually creata a XML-skeleton-file from the known xsd.
2) Load it with:
            DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document document = documentBuilder.parse("xml_xsd/ProductModel.xml");

3) Fill it with some data.

4) Perhaps do some validation like:
            documentBuilderFactory.setValidating(true);
            documentBuilderFactory.setAttribute("http://java.sun.com/xml/jaxp/properties/schemaLanguage", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema");
            documentBuilderFactory.setAttribute("http://java.sun.com/xml/jaxp/properties/schemaSource", "file:xml_xsd/ProductModel.xml");


Or do you got any nicer way to build the XML-structure dynamically?

Best regards
Fredrik

I definitely don't think you're stupid :-)

I just ask because I don't fully understand your question.

How would you put something meaningful into the XML file if you don't know the content of the schema (because you load them dynamically) ?

Hello again!

The great thing would be if I could let the selection of the xsd-file be dynamic and let this selection control how the XML-structure may look like.

Perhaps it is impossible!! -> "How would you put something meaningful into the XML file if you don't know the content of the schema (because you load them dynamically) ?"

What do you think about this:

1) Read all elements from the XSD-file.
2) Get corresponding data from a database or other source for each element.
3) Build the XML-document with the XSD-elements and fill them with the data?

Do you see anything stupid with this approach? Perhaps it is a lot more difficult than I guess?

Best regards
Fredrik

I think that item 1 is difficult.
With XML Schema you can create rather complex document structures.
Besides that how would your application respond to a user created type ?
  - e.g. a simpletype with user specified restrictions

I think you should aquire the XML Schemas and only support the schemas you know statically.
(Perhaps use a Strategy pattern to handle each kind of known XML Schema and possible load strategies dynamically to allow flexibility).

And then build the XML document, validate it against the appropriate schema and send it to who ever needs it.


(my advice is only speculative since I don't fully understand your domain)

Please give svar so I can reward you and close this one!

I close this one since it is old!


Best regards
Fredrik