Create UI from XSD?
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I once considered building a component which did something similar. I wanted to build something which would apply validation rules to controls based on an XSD. You specify the part of the XSD which a control "represents" and the component would then automatically enforce that rule. Never did get around to it...
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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:suss:I heard that Larry, Curly, and Moe beat down Chuck Norris.:suss: You heard that?
God Bless, Jason
I am not perfect but I try to be better than those before me. So those who come after me will be better than I am.jason_lakewhitney wrote:
I heard that Larry, Curly, and Moe beat down Chuck Norris. You heard that?
Curly accidentally smacked him in the head with a plank of wood while turning around...but Chuck Norris eats planks of wood for breakfast. Then spits the splinters at people and impales them.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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jason_lakewhitney wrote:
I heard that Larry, Curly, and Moe beat down Chuck Norris. You heard that?
Curly accidentally smacked him in the head with a plank of wood while turning around...but Chuck Norris eats planks of wood for breakfast. Then spits the splinters at people and impales them.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
Josh Smith wrote:
impales them
:wtf:
God Bless, Jason
I am not perfect but I try to be better than those before me. So those who come after me will be better than I am. -
Josh Smith wrote:
impales them
:wtf:
God Bless, Jason
I am not perfect but I try to be better than those before me. So those who come after me will be better than I am.jason_lakewhitney wrote: :wtf:
;)
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Sounds like somebody's next article here. I wonder who that could be.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Josh Smith wrote:
Never did get around to it...
Well what good are you? :)
God Bless, Jason
I am not perfect but I try to be better than those before me. So those who come after me will be better than I am. -
Sounds like somebody's next article here. I wonder who that could be.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
Pete O`Hanlon wrote:
Sounds like somebody's next article here. I wonder who that could be.
I'll have to see if I can get permission from my client to make any such work public. :) Marc
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How dare you critise King Josh, hail the WPF king ;) being one of the WPF deciples I dare anyone to mock our king.
It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.
norm .net wrote:
How dare you critise King Josh, hail the WPF king
:omg: :-O :->
norm .net wrote:
being one of the WPF deciples I dare anyone to mock our king.
Slay the non-believers, Norm. :)
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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norm .net wrote:
How dare you critise King Josh, hail the WPF king
:omg: :-O :->
norm .net wrote:
being one of the WPF deciples I dare anyone to mock our king.
Slay the non-believers, Norm. :)
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
How dare you continue to wear your WPF crown now that you've strayed into none-WPF territory? Nah - only joking. All hail King Josh. Repeat after me: "All hail the King. Blessed be the name of the King. For the King giveth WPF and the King taketh away WPF. Ladies and gentlemen - Josh has left the building."
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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How dare you continue to wear your WPF crown now that you've strayed into none-WPF territory? Nah - only joking. All hail King Josh. Repeat after me: "All hail the King. Blessed be the name of the King. For the King giveth WPF and the King taketh away WPF. Ladies and gentlemen - Josh has left the building."
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
Pete O`Hanlon wrote:
How dare you continue to wear your WPF crown now that you've strayed into none-WPF territory?
Isn't there some Zen saying about taking a step backwards to go forwards? Yeah, something like that... :rolleyes:
Pete O`Hanlon wrote:
Ladies and gentlemen - Josh has left the building
Speaking of...adios muchachos!
:josh: My WPF Blog[^] Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Besides the work that I did on this a few years ago, which was pretty primitive, do you know of anyone (commercial or otherwise) that has put together a "control" that dynamically generates its contents (child controls to edit the associated XML) given an XSD? Marc
Marc, thats like saying, here's the C# spec, I need something that can generate me a program :) BUT, given you have an XSD, you can easily use XSL + XML to create the end result.
xacc.ide
The rule of three: "The first time you notice something that might repeat, don't generalize it. The second time the situation occurs, develop in a similar fashion -- possibly even copy/paste -- but don't generalize yet. On the third time, look to generalize the approach." -
Besides the work that I did on this a few years ago, which was pretty primitive, do you know of anyone (commercial or otherwise) that has put together a "control" that dynamically generates its contents (child controls to edit the associated XML) given an XSD? Marc
I've been trying to find this for a while now : XSD -> XSL -> UI -> XML -> XSL -> XSD. the UI would combo box all the previous allowable values for an element, plus allow entry of a new value. If a new one was entered, the final XSD would now have it included, so the next time around it would be in the list of values.
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Besides the work that I did on this a few years ago, which was pretty primitive, do you know of anyone (commercial or otherwise) that has put together a "control" that dynamically generates its contents (child controls to edit the associated XML) given an XSD? Marc
You didn't specify whether you need to generate the UI from an unknown XSD at runtime (rough equiv. of magic), or if your schema is known at design time, so I'll tell you what I know about both. I've built a couple of apps using Altova's Authentic framework, and SoftQuad's XMetal/XMAX control to embed editing features for static XSDs in .NET apps. Both of these frameworks have a client component that you need to install to use the ActiveX control, and both have styling features that range from basic to super-advanced, and both have a really awful-looking basic mode that quickly generates a UI from a static or inferred XSD. Both of these frameworks also have a stand-alone editor with navigation and form-like features, but they are both very document-oriented. I've also built several Infopath projects for simple apps that had static schemas. Infopath is an excellent option to prototype UIs that will eventually be bound to XML documents, fragments, or relational databases, but only if you already have it or you have the budget to buy it. XMetal has a hefty per-seat cost while Authentic is free, but XMetal's ActiveX control and stand-alone editor are much better, IMO. I've used all three on different projects, and the users were generally happy with the results. The dynamic-UI-from-runtime-specified-XSD story is pretty bleak. You're pretty much limited to a few very experimental frameworks (do your own googling for the latest smoke and mirrors), or full-fledged XML/XSD editors like XML Notepad from Microsoft (free, small, simple, stable), or legacy dedicated editor/designers like Spy, Sylus Studio, etc. (most have lots of warts). The few frameworks I've seen that could generate UIs at runtime from user-specified XSDs only supported a subset of the XSD spec and created absolutely heinous UIs--nothing you'd want to throw at a user. Not that full-fledged editors are any better for the user; they're all slanted toward the developer/admin role. I agree with the poster who compared this endeavor to asking "Given the C# spec, does anyone know of an app that can generate progams for me?" Assuming you're trying something sane, like starting with a static schema at design time, the best .NET method I've come up with to create validating UIs is: 1. Use XSD.EXE (comes with visual studio) to generate serializable classes from the parts of the schema that need to be bound to UI controls 2. Manually create UI/user controls and then databind your components to the XSD classes 3. Add exceptions to the property setters in
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You didn't specify whether you need to generate the UI from an unknown XSD at runtime (rough equiv. of magic), or if your schema is known at design time, so I'll tell you what I know about both. I've built a couple of apps using Altova's Authentic framework, and SoftQuad's XMetal/XMAX control to embed editing features for static XSDs in .NET apps. Both of these frameworks have a client component that you need to install to use the ActiveX control, and both have styling features that range from basic to super-advanced, and both have a really awful-looking basic mode that quickly generates a UI from a static or inferred XSD. Both of these frameworks also have a stand-alone editor with navigation and form-like features, but they are both very document-oriented. I've also built several Infopath projects for simple apps that had static schemas. Infopath is an excellent option to prototype UIs that will eventually be bound to XML documents, fragments, or relational databases, but only if you already have it or you have the budget to buy it. XMetal has a hefty per-seat cost while Authentic is free, but XMetal's ActiveX control and stand-alone editor are much better, IMO. I've used all three on different projects, and the users were generally happy with the results. The dynamic-UI-from-runtime-specified-XSD story is pretty bleak. You're pretty much limited to a few very experimental frameworks (do your own googling for the latest smoke and mirrors), or full-fledged XML/XSD editors like XML Notepad from Microsoft (free, small, simple, stable), or legacy dedicated editor/designers like Spy, Sylus Studio, etc. (most have lots of warts). The few frameworks I've seen that could generate UIs at runtime from user-specified XSDs only supported a subset of the XSD spec and created absolutely heinous UIs--nothing you'd want to throw at a user. Not that full-fledged editors are any better for the user; they're all slanted toward the developer/admin role. I agree with the poster who compared this endeavor to asking "Given the C# spec, does anyone know of an app that can generate progams for me?" Assuming you're trying something sane, like starting with a static schema at design time, the best .NET method I've come up with to create validating UIs is: 1. Use XSD.EXE (comes with visual studio) to generate serializable classes from the parts of the schema that need to be bound to UI controls 2. Manually create UI/user controls and then databind your components to the XSD classes 3. Add exceptions to the property setters in
Hey Jeese, thanks for the great response. We've looked at Altova's Authenticate framework but I don't think anyone has looked at XMetal. Marc
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Hey Jeese, thanks for the great response. We've looked at Altova's Authenticate framework but I don't think anyone has looked at XMetal. Marc
One more detail: I went looking for XMetal specifically because of Authentic performance problems. My team was writing an editor based on another department's existing framework, but the borrowed code was excruciatingly slow with any schema-based XML document over 1/2mb. Their editing control was written in C# as a thin wrapper around the Authentic ActiveX control, so we started looking for drop-in replacements. Just seeing both controls render simple, unstyled XML showed a big enough performance diff to convince our users to fund the per-seat XMetal costs. Just scrolling a 2mb document in Authentic was awful, so we never looked back. YMMV--that was back in '03/04, so maybe Authentic has improved. I think someone already mentioned this: if you want a really interesting browser-based solution to rendering UI from XSD, check out XForms. It will take a lot of additional plumbing before major browsers have native implementations, but there are plenty of plugins that can render them today.
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One more detail: I went looking for XMetal specifically because of Authentic performance problems. My team was writing an editor based on another department's existing framework, but the borrowed code was excruciatingly slow with any schema-based XML document over 1/2mb. Their editing control was written in C# as a thin wrapper around the Authentic ActiveX control, so we started looking for drop-in replacements. Just seeing both controls render simple, unstyled XML showed a big enough performance diff to convince our users to fund the per-seat XMetal costs. Just scrolling a 2mb document in Authentic was awful, so we never looked back. YMMV--that was back in '03/04, so maybe Authentic has improved. I think someone already mentioned this: if you want a really interesting browser-based solution to rendering UI from XSD, check out XForms. It will take a lot of additional plumbing before major browsers have native implementations, but there are plenty of plugins that can render them today.
Jesse Jacob wrote:
if you want a really interesting browser-based solution to rendering UI from XSD, check out XForms.
Ah, but I'm looking for a WinForm component, not a browser-based component. :) Marc