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XSDConverter

Parses XSD files and generates Objective-C classes for IOS (or OSX) -- uses libxml only

For every Complex Type in your schema file, a corresponding Objective-C class is generated with its attributes and elements as Objective-C properties and an init method taking an libxml2 TextReader is generated.

The code is generated according to a template that you can easily customize if you need to generate specific/exotic code. For most folks the standard template included should work just fine.

The generator is a framework that is completely seperate from the GUI. And thus it can be embedded in any cocoa app.

The generator is checked which unit tests that read specific xsds, generate code for it, compile it using clang and then see if they can parse an according xml
(so IF you find bugs / missing features - please provide a xsd & a xml file so I can fix it / add it to the generator)

###What works already: (1.4)

(the key points I remember)
  • Complex type elements
  • Simple type elements/attributes (standard and custom)
    • 40/44 types defined by the w3c work
      outstanding: date, time, base64Binary, hexBinary
  • Inheritance by extension
  • restrictions with enumeration support (thanks to Alex Smith for the initial trigger) ** 1.4 **
  • Static parsing methods for global elements (a category is generated for a complex type that is used as the root element)
  • Mapping xml namespaces to class name prefixes via a specific tag in a template. (without it, namespaces are mapped 1 : 1 to Class prefixes)
  • referencing external files to copy to the destination folder when generating code ** 1.2 **
  • nested sequences & choices
  • includes and imports of other XSD files ** 1.3 **
  • annotations of elements that are converted to comments ** 1.3 **
  • anonymous 'inner' types (complex and simple)

the generated parser only requires libxml and I have tested it on IOS as well as OSX

  • (Remember: to use the classes, link your target against libxml2 (!))

The generator itself uses the NSXML* tree based API and is for OSX only.

###Biggest pain points

  1. So far the generator does NOT handle references to elements/attributes via the ref= attribute.
  2. The min & maxOccurances of elements inside a sequence/choice must be specified on element itself as opposed to the sequence itself

The Project is still in alpha phase, BUT real world usage is already be possible. and practiced
A demo project is included and I used it to generate XML Parsers for two commercial projects already (Ill merge back fixes as I find the time).

###how-to (based on 1.0)

(very brief ;))

  1. download the sourcecode and use XCode 5+ to build the xsd2cocoa mac app. (At this point, Im not providing a binary)

  2. Upon starting the app you see a window 1

  3. here you specify:

    • the XSD to process
    • the output folder for the generated .m/.h files
    • the template to use (built-in vs. custom path) 2

  4. After specifying the in- and output paths you hit 'write code' and you get ready to use .h/.m files. (Remember: to use the classes, link against libxml2 (!)) 3

###credits The basic code was on google projects. The original xsd2cocoa was written by Stefan Winter in 2011 and even if not really usable, it was already quite awesome

I made numerous fixes and improvements to the generator.

  • additions to properly deal with lots of more XSD features (too many to list here)
  • new features to the template to make things more customizable
  • a lot of refactoring. Modernizing, getting rid of code... I would say I removed 1/2 the code ;)
  • addded a UI for the app as well as a Demo project to make it easier to use
  • modernized and completed the templates used to generate the code

The code uses the MGTemplateEngine by Matt Gemmel