From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-02-24T02:32:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Creating Ruby Classes from XSD?


On Feb 23, 2006, at 12:12 PM, Justin Bailey wrote:

> .NET ships with a tool that will generate classes directly from an XML
> schema (XSD) file. Does the Ruby standard library have anything  
> similar?
> It's a great tool on the .NET side, and I bet Ruby could do it even  
> better,
> if not.

Ok, I'm going to be honest and say first I've never had occasion to  
use this tool. But I'm wondering what exactly is the point? Ruby's  
syntax is much less verbose than XML.
Why would you want to type  this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name="shiporder">
  <xs:complexType>
   <xs:sequence>
    <xs:element name="orderperson" type="xs:string"/>
    <xs:element name="shipto">
     <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
       <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
       <xs:element name="address" type="xs:string"/>
       <xs:element name="city" type="xs:string"/>
       <xs:element name="country" type="xs:string"/>
      </xs:sequence>
     </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
    <xs:element name="item" maxOccurs="unbounded">
     <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
       <xs:element name="title" type="xs:string"/>
       <xs:element name="note" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"/>
       <xs:element name="quantity" type="xs:positiveInteger"/>
       <xs:element name="price" type="xs:decimal"/>
      </xs:sequence>
     </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
   </xs:sequence>
   <xs:attribute name="orderid" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>

When you can do one of these:
class Shipto < Struct.new(:name, :address, :city, :country)
end

class Item < Struct.new(:orderid, :title, :note, :quantity, :price)
end

class  Shipment < Struct.new(:shipto, :item)
end

shipments =  []

I may have mangled some of the XSD, I'm admitedly not familiar with  
it, but generating classes froma  schema seems rife with problems