.NET & XML

Using the XSD Tool

Microsoft provides a tool with the .NET Framework SDK called XSD, the XML Schemas/DataTypes support utility. With this tool, you can generate schemas from source code, compiled assemblies, and XML documents, as well as generating source code in various .NET languages from schemas.

The XSD command-line syntax shown here is explained in Table 8-1:

xsd.exe filename.ext [argument [...]]

Table 8-1. XSD tool command-line syntax

Argument	Description
filename.ext	This argument specifies the name of the file to use as input. This can be either a CLR DLL (.dll) or executable file (.exe); an XML (.xml) file; or an XML Schema Definition (.xsd) or XML-Data-Reduced (.xdr) file. The type of the input file determines what other arguments are allowed.
/classes /c	When an XSD file is specified, generates source code for classes as determined by the schema. This argument is mutually exclusive with /dataset.
/dataset /d	When an XSD file is specified, generates source code for classes that are subclasses of System.Data.DataSet as determined by the schema. This argument is mutually exclusive with /classes.
/element:element /e:element	When an XSD file is specified, this argument specifies which elements to generate types for. /element may be specified more than once. The default is to generate types for all elements.
/language:language /l:language	When an XSD file is specified, this argument specifies the language to generate types in. language may be one of cs (C#),