The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘XSD’ Category

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Hopefully by now the Chocolatey .nuspec extensions and limitations are documented in a more central way

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/08

Chocolatey extends the NuGet file format .nuspec based XML files as base for their packages with at the time of writing very sparse and limited documentation in what it extends, why it does that and what extra limitations it imposes on the fields used inside .nuspec files.

Hopefully by now that has improved, so this post is a reminder to myself to check that out eventually.

At the time of writing, the NuGet .nuspec documentation was at [Wayback/Archive] .nuspec File Reference for NuGet | Microsoft Learn and the file format at [Wayback/Archive] NuGet.Client/nuspec.xsd at dev · NuGet/NuGet.Client. Most fields are defined as primitive data types xs:boolean, xs:string and xs:anyURI (of the 19 available primitive XML SChema (W3C) types). Some composite data types are are composed from them using local and global complexType, most using xs:all, xs:attribute or single-type unbounded xs:sequence (which all imply no particular order).

Since an XML Schema allows to both use restriction and extension on data types (the eXtensible in XML!), making them more strict is a relatively straight-forward operation and has the benefit of having these in a central place.

In the past for more than 5 years [Wayback/Archive] Is there a specification for the package format? · Issue #379 · chocolatey/choco was just pointing to the NuGet .nuspec format, but after a request to re-open new comments were made pointing to a current issue (basically a stub, but still) and a Chocolatey nuspec.xsd file, yay!

Still it was a quest to figure out the additional rules they have added, especially since the documentation was sparse and sloppy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Chocolatey, Development, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, XML/XSD, XSD | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Not all XSD mappings to programming language constructs are possible

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/02/26

This post is a reminder to myself that not all mappings from XSD to programming languages are possible.

There are many impossible cases, so this is just a general reminder.

A Delphi specific case for instance is the mapping of enumerations: one reason is that XSD enumerations are case sensitive, but the Delphi language is not: [WayBack] Using XML Enumerations with Delphi XML Data Binding Wizard – Stack Overflow.

More generic examples from my answer to the above question:

  • In XSD you can derive from an existing type in two ways: extending it and limiting it. Object Oriented languages only allow you extend when deriving.
  • Delphi is not alone in these kinds of limitations. Generating wrappers from XSD schema’s is the field of specialized tools, even in the Java or .NET world.

I’ve seen horrible things with wildcards that are sort of mappable to Java, but not to C#. This could likely go on for much longer…

–jeroen

Posted in C#, Delphi, Development, Java, Java Platform, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 2 Comments »

Reminder to self: make a start for an XSD that validates Delphi dproj files

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/07

Below are a few interesting things from this thread [WayBack] Any idea why Delphi (At least since Seattle) does this to Dproj filesand… – Tommi Prami – Google+.

It’s likely that the WordPress system deleted parts between angle brackets because it thinks it’s invalid HTML and WordPress is PHP.

Anyhow: maybe by now I’ve found time for creating an XSD for .dproj files in addition to the one I mentioned yesterday for the .groupproj files: Validating a nested XML element with an empty namespace using XSD – Stack Overflow.

Oh and in the mean time for various Delphi versions, there is a (binary, because it uses some commercially licensed parts) [WayBack] Dproj changed or not changed? Normalize it! | The Art of Delphi Programming.

Files and directories I need to research:

In the mean time, QualityPortal indicates that:

Achim Kalwa:
That is a long living bug: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-11308
Still exists in Berlin Update 2.

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers
For more than a decade, the IDE rewriting dproj files in different order/indentation/spacing, properties appearing/disappearing in DFM files and writing DFM files despite no changes have driven me even more nuts than I was.

Walter Prins
+Jeroen Wiert Pluimers Yes. Given that .dproj is XML I’ve been almost annoyed enough to look at making some kind of pre-checkin script to force sort things to try and avoid the issue. Almost… Edit: Ah, just checked that RSP, which references this: https://github.com/joshkel/RadCli Seems someone has already done it.

Lübbe Onken
Did you try tidy_proj +Walter Prins? For me it fails with a “Unicode Encode Error” when I try to write an output file. In my case this is caused by German umlauts in the excluded bpl section descriptions. Changing the umlauts to something low-ascii allows tidy_proj to finish.

Walter Prins
+Lübbe Onken No, but I have just done so. Unicode bites again. To fix that error, change line 125 from:

print(proj.toxml())

to:

print(proj.toxml().encode(‘utf-8’))

Note: This will likely not display correctly if you allow the output to go to the console but will ensure it is correct if redirected back to file.

Edit: Ha, I was about to go report this issue ad suggest this fix, but I see you’ve already suggested essentially the same fix. ;)

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers’s profile photo
Jeroen Wiert Pluimers
+Walter Prins interesting tool! Do you know of a tool that can downgrade .dproj files so you can use them with older Delphi versions? (the opposite of what the IDE does)?

Or someone that has written more than my XSD on .dproj files? My one is so small that’s hardly a real attempt. https://wiert.me/2013/08/31/delphi-first-try-on-an-xsd-for-groupproj-files/

Walter Prins
+Jeroen Wiert Pluimers No, but interesting idea. I suppose you’re probably aware that the JEDI JCL/JVCL takes a somewhat similar (ish) related approach, in that it generates project and package files that are compatible with every desired version of Delphi from minimalist (XML) template files. Every so often I think it might be worth looking whether one can re-use the code from there easily but haven’t gotten around to it. Always something else to do first. :/

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers
+Walter Prins no I didn’t. Where should I start reading on that minimalist template approach?

Walter Prins
+Jeroen Wiert Pluimers Sorry I see I missed out the word installer in my comment: It’s the Jedi JCL/JVCL installers that uses xml templates etc.

But the point stands: I guess it should be (perhaps) possible to reuse its infrastructure for ones own projects, though as I say I keep meaning to look into this but haven’t really done so.

(BTW I’m assuming you are familiar with the JCL/JVCL and in in particular their installers that bootstrap from source code? If not then perhaps my comments may not be that useful?)

Anyway, not sure if or where there’s particular documentation about this (kind of doubt it), but if you have the JCL/JVCL installed somewhere, then first of all have a look at the “xml” folders e.g. “<jclroot>\jcl\packages\xmls” and “<jvclroot>\jvcl\packages\xml”.

These files appear to define projects and packages in a seemingly abstract/somewhat minimal way using XML. This seemingly is then used to automatically produce .dproj and .dpk files which are placed in e.g. “<jclroot>\jcl\packages\dXX” and “<jvclroot>\jvcl\packages\dXX” where dXX corresponds to a folder for each of the supported Delphi versions and compiled/used during installation.

Having just looked into this briefly a bit further as a result of this conversation: Key units here (in the case of JVCL) seems to be “<jvclroot>\devtools\PackagesGenerator\PackageGenerator.pas”, “<jvclroot>\install\JVCLInstall\PackageUtils.pas” and “<jvclroot>\devtools\common\PackageInformation.pas” (used predictably by <jvclroot>\JVCLInstall.dproj)

(Additionally, having looked at this a bit more closely, it also appears that the JCL does not actually replace all or even most of its .dproj and .dpk files after all, but ships version specific .dproj and .dpk files in most cases, though the JVCL does appear to mostly do so. )

Edit: The JCL also has this interesting sounding unit “jclroot>\source\windows\JclMsBuild.pas” which appears to be an MSBuild project file parser…

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Continuous Integration, Delphi, Development, Event, msbuild, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

Validating a nested XML element with an empty namespace using XSD – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/06

In a quest for making Delphi Group Project XML files (with extension .groupproj) validate with XSD, I had to find out about [WayBack] Validating a nested XML element with an empty namespace using XSD – Stack Overflow.

I needed the XSD so I could import it in Delphi in order to write a good .groupproj file generator.

They are here:

And some more background posts are here:

–jeren

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 1 Comment »

Schema Central: XML vocabularies with all their XSD schema’s in a nice browsable overview including references, explanations and examples

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/09/11

Schema Central, by [WayBack] Datypic, Inc. (Priscilla Walmsley) is to golden that I quote the whole index page below.

The index refers to XML vocabularies. Each vocabulary page links the corresponding XSD pages. Each XSD page lists documentation, elements, etc. Each element page then documents the element, shows where it is referenced from.

Welcome to Schema Central, an interactive tool to traverse and search XML schemas. Please choose your XML vocabulary of interest to get started. Don’t see the XML vocabulary you use? Ask us to add it.

Core XML Technologies

Presentation-Oriented Standards

Office/Narrative Document Standards

Business Document Standards

NIEM-related Standards

Miscellaneous

Web Services Technologies

Security-Related Technologies

Site developed and hosted by Datypic, Inc.

Please report errors or comments about this site to contrib@functx.com

[WayBack]

If I ever need a long term XML/XSD/XSLT/XQuery hire, this is the “about” information I need:

Datypic provides consulting services and training, specializing in XML, content management and SOA/Web Services architecture and development. We are experts in XML-related technologies such as XML Schema, XSLT and XQuery, and have extensive experience with software development and implementation.

We participate in consulting projects ranging from one day to many months, anywhere in the world. We can arrange to work remotely or at your site, whichever you prefer.

For more information, please read about our services or our company, or contact us as pwalmsley@datypic.com.

Recent news from Priscilla Walmsley

  • I recently updated my book XQuery to match the final XQuery 3.1 recommendation. You can read more about it or order it from O’Reilly or Amazon.
  • I recently taught a course at the XML Summer School on Refactoring XSLT. Slides are available as a PDF.
  • More information about my recent books and articles is available on this site.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XPath, XSD, XSLT | Leave a Comment »

C#, XSD.exe, xsd2code and generating nullable fields+properties from an XSD with and without Specified fields/properties

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/07/27

It comes down to these cases for XML elements having maxOccurs="1" (which the default for maxOccurs):

  1. adding nillable="true" will convert from a regular type to a nullable type.
  2. adding minOccurs="0" will add boolean …Specified properties in the generated C# for each element.
  3. you can have both nillable="true" and minOccurs="0" in an element which gets you a nullable type and a …Specified property.

Note I’m not considering fixed or default here, nor attributes (that have use instead of minOccurs/maxOccurs, but do not allow for nillable) nor larger values of maxOccurs (which both xsd.exe and xsd2code regard as unbounded).

From the above, XML has a richer type system than C#, so in XML there are subtle a differences between:

  1. an explicit nil in the XML element
  2. the XML element being absent
  3. the XML element being empty.

Hopefully later more text and examples to show how to actually work with this.

Delphi related to minOccurs:

Note that xsd2code.codeplex.com (unlike XmlGen#) has at least two forks at github:

From the specs:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C# 6 (Roslyn), Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

XSD enumerations: key value pairs

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/26

One of the things you cannot do in XSD, is have string enumerations contain both a key and a value.

But there is a little appinfo trick inside annotation that you can user under some circumstances, for instance when you interpret the XSD:


<xs:simpleType name="event_result">
<xs:restriction base="xs:string">
<xs:enumeration value="101">
<xsd:annotation><xsd:appinfo>Syntax error</xsd:appinfo></xsd:annotation>
</xs:enumeration>
<xs:enumeration value="102">
<xsd:annotation><xsd:appinfo>Illegal operation</xsd:appinfo></xsd:annotation>
</xs:enumeration>
<xs:enumeration value="103">
<xsd:annotation><xsd:appinfo>Service not available</xsd:appinfo></xsd:annotation>
</xs:enumeration>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

view raw

xs:annotation-xs:appinfo.xsd

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

appinfo is the application counterpart of documentation: both can contain any xml, but appinfo is aimed at machines, whereas documentation is aimed at humans.

–jeroen

via:

Posted in Development, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

XSD enumerations: restrict strings, integers, etc.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/21

XSD enumerations are nice as they can be used to restrict simple XSD types to a set of values.

But they can also be hard if the set changes over time: restricting further is not possible, but extending isn’t always easy either.

Some interesting links:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

Support of import in xsd.exe – Jose Luis Calvo Salanova – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/20

I tend to forget this: xsd.exe can resolve xs:include, but not xs:import. When using xs:import it will complain about missing types.

Simple solution: reference all imported XSDs (but not included XSDs) on the same command-line:

I was trying to create a C# class with xsd.exe from an schema that imports others schemas like that xsd.exe /c schema.xsd and it fails miserably reporting an error like “The datatype ‘xxx’ is missing.”. Basically xsd.exe doesn’t resolve the schemaLocation attribute.

Dare Obasanjo’s article addresses the problem, and Scott Hanselman had the same problem -and solved it-.

The solution isn’t very nice, but at least it’s simple. You have to tell xsd.exe all the schema referenced, xsd.exe /c schema.xsd importedSchema1.xsd importedSchema2.xsd

Be aware that the C# filename is sometimes generated from all XSD filenames on the command-line (I’ve noticed this when the import is specified before the actual XSD file, if the import is at the end, the name of the import is used.

If my memory serves me right, older versions of XSD.exe could not resolve unix-style relative paths on the command-line, but newer versions do.

–jeroen

via: Support of import in xsd.exe – Jose Luis Calvo Salanova – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

existing complex XSD types: use xs:complexContent in combination with xs:extension

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/19

I tend to forget how to extend existing complex XSD types. It is by using xs:complexContent in combination with xs:extension: Element (complexContent).

A cool thing: xsd.exe supports this when generating .NET code (for instance C#).

More at XSD Tutorial – Part 3/5 – Extending Existing ComplexTypes and SimpleTypes.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

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