If maintainability and ease of implementation are considered, one of the good approach would be to use (Java) Jaxb equivalent implementation in C#.net. Using Jaxb, POJO (Plain Old Java Objects) classes can be generated from xml schema definition files. Generated POJOs can be used to serialze and deserialize data from/into xml files.
Following libraries and tools can be used to generate POCO (Plain Old C# Objects) from DocBook schema files.
- The XML Schema Definition Tool (xsd.exe) is part of the Visual Studio SDK and has basic functionality.
- The XSD Sample Code Generator Tool (XSDObjectGen.exe) is a more fully featured tool with more advanced features, and is released separately.
- As an alternative, there's Xsd2Code.
In my attempt, the xsd.exe which is available with VS SDK was tried out to generate C# classes from DocBook xsd file. Here is how to use it.
- Download the xsd schema file from http://www.docbook.org/xml/5.0/xsd/docbook.xsd and place it in a folder. (I have used DocBook version 5.0 schema)
- Open Visual Studio command promot and cd to the folder which contains the docbook.xsd
- Run the command xsd docbook.xsd /c /l:CS
If you get following errors while generating classes from DocBook xsd; the easiest solution would be just to comment out the lines state in warnings and execute the same command with xsd.exe :)
Microsoft (R) Xml Schemas/DataTypes support utility
[Microsoft (R) .NET Framework, Version 4.0.30319.18020]
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:href' attribute is not declared. Line 46, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:type' attribute is not declared. Line 47, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:role' attribute is not declared. Line 48, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:arcrole' attribute is not declared. Line 49, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:title' attribute is not declared. Line 50, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:show' attribute is not declared. Line 51, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:actuate' attribute is not declared. Line 52, position 6.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:label' attribute is not declared. Line 7515, position 8.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:from' attribute is not declared. Line 7522, position 8.
Schema validation warning: The 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink:to' attribute is no t declared. Line 7523, position 8.
Warning: Schema could not be validated. Class generation may fail or may produce incorrect results.
Error: Error generating classes for schema 'docbookV5'.
- The attribute href is missing.
If you would like more help, please type "xsd /?".
Though I was able to generate POCOs from xsd.exe, the generated classes resulted in StackOverflowException when trying to initialize with XmlSerializer(
As a remedy, Xsd2Code can be successfully generate POCOs instead of xsd.exe. The steps to use Xsd2Code can be found at http://xsd2code.codeplex.com/. Generated classes from Xsd2Code worked well without any issue.
After generating POCOs, you can include it in your Visual Studio project and use it to write into/ read from DocBook XML files by serializing/deserializing. Sysmet.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerialiser can be used to above purpose. Following utility class can be used for that.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
namespace DocBookXml
{
public static class XmlConverter
{
private static XmlSerializer _serializer = null;
///
/// Static constructor that initialises the serializer for this type
///
static XmlConverter()
{
_serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
}
///
/// Deserialize the supplied XML into an object
///
///
///
public static T ToObject(string xml)
{
return (T) _serializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(xml));
}
///
/// Serialize the supplied object into XML
///
///
///
public static string ToXML(T obj)
{
using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
{
_serializer.Serialize(memoryStream, obj);
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());
}
}
}
}
Reference documentation for DocBook XSL transforms
HTML edition of book explaining the use of DocBook XSL
