XML Tribune

XML ValidatorBuddy offers a lot of functionality for XML files. You can check your XML documents for well-formedness, you can validate against W3C schema files, against DTDs and also against Schematron rules. It is also possible to validate huge XML files without loading them into memory which is a big benefit and to validate multiple XML files at once and also to run batch validations. XML ValidatorBuddy also does XSL transformations and can generate documentations for W3C schema files. This is a lot of functionality but how do you edit your XML? For this purpos the XML ValidatorBuddy application offers a nice way to quickly launch your favorite editor for any file.

There are good and affordable text editors available which also support editing of XML with things like syntax-coloring and pretty-printing. Currently I prefer to use Notepad++ to edit my XML files which is free and already a mature software. To use it just download and install it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/files/

And here is how to link your favorite text and XML editor to the XML ValidatorBuddy desktop application. We will use the user tool functionality of the application. At first you need to start XML ValidatorBuddy from the Windows Start menu. Then open the Options dialog to add a custom user tool. This is possible on the “Tools setup” page of the Options dialog. Use the “New” button at the right top corner to add a new tool and fill the controls like you can see it on this screenshot:

Tools setup page

This will add Notepad++ as an icon to the File Explorer tab of the application and also a command to the context menu. From now on you can open any of the selected files quickly in Notepad++ by just clicking the icon or using the command. The screenshot below shows how XML ValidatorBuddy integrates the external tool as an icon on a row at the bottom of the File Explorer window:

Notepad++ icon

If you open the file in the external editor and save it modified the validation status is automatically updated in XML ValidatorBuddy (if the file has been validated already).

Of course you can add any external tool to XML ValidatorBuddy which supports command-line options and also execution of Java code something I will show in the next blog entry…

There is a new page about XML ValidatorBuddy on Facebook:

XML ValidatorBuddy

Wirb ebenfalls für deine Seite

Of course you are welcome to become a fan…

Rick Jelliffe did a minor update to the current ISO Schematron implementations. Please download them here: http://www.schematron.com/implementation.html

Briefly the changes are:

1. A fix for running EXSLT Schematron.
2. New parameter “terminate” to stop validation on the first failed assert.
3. A new version of the Schematron ANT task is also available.

Just a quick note… On every PC there is a text editor already available. And there are also some more sophisticated text editors available for free like this one Notepad++ which offer XML syntax coloring and support for different encodings which is important for XML documents. So very often you just need to do a quick change to your XML file and then you also need to make sure the file is still valid afterwards or the XSL transformation still works as expected. Imagine you just need to remove some typos or wrongly written names in the content.

This is where XML ValidatorBuddy can help you to save the money for an XML editor with a lot of features you will never need or use. Edit your XML files with your favorite text editor and do the validation of your documents from the Windows File Explorer and ValidatorBuddy.

Running any XSL transformation as easy as getting the file properties in the Windows File Explorer? A user friendly way to run XSL transformations allows a wider range of people to work with XML files. Therefore the next version of XML ValidatorBuddy will provide a command to do XSL transformations. So XML ValidatorBuddy makes it possible for everyone to run XSL transformations for any XML file using any XSL stylesheet by a simple dialog:

XSL transformation dialog

All you need to do is to install XML ValidatorBuddy (available with version 2.7) and the free AltovaXML parser.

A tutorial is a wonderful thing. Learning how to write Schematron rules with a tutorial is also a wonderful thing. Unfortunately validating XML instance files against a Schematron schema is not always easy. But if it is cumbersome to work with Schematron schemas, then going through the tutorial is also no fun. XML ValidatorBuddy makes it easy to validate XML instance files against a Schematron rule set directly within XMLSpy. This enables you to focus on Schematron itself and not on how to use it.

I take the files from chapter 7 of the Schematron tutorial available at http://www.dpawson.co.uk/schematron/keys.html . Of course the method described here to create and validate the sample files can also applied on any other chapter of the tutorial.

The basic steps are:

1. Select and copy the content of the Schematron schema and XML sample instance files directly from the web pages of the tutorial (with Ctrl+C).
2. Create a new .sch document for the Schematron schema and a new .xml document for the sample XML in XMLSpy. Paste the file content with Ctrl+V.
3. Save the files anywhere you like.
4. Add a folder to the Project open in XMLSpy and put both into the new folder. ValidatorBuddy recognizes that there is a .sch file in the same project folder as the XML instance and takes this schema for Schematron validation.
5. Make the .xml file the active document in XMLSpy.
6. Press “Validate” on the Schematron tab of the XML ValidatorBuddy plugin window.
7. Check the results

Schematron tutorial chapter 7 result

I have 5 Google Wave invitations to give away. So how do you get one?

Just download XML ValidatorBuddy and test the tool. Give valuable feedback and I will send an invitation for you if you want a Google Wave account. There are no formal requirements for the feedback. It is enough that you suggest or find anything which is not obvious and a real improvement.

Please note that of course I can’t guarantee that you get an account and I even can’t promise that I will write back to everybody. But if you are one of the first 5 testers I will send the invitation.

[Update 12/16/2009] There are still some Google Wave invitations left…

Here is a summary of the changes in XML ValidatorBuddy 2.6:

Copy validation report in XMLSpy as XML

In the past it was not possible to access the validation report in the XMLSpy plugin for further processing beside scrolling through the error list and selecting the error location. Now the Schematron and Xerces tab are providing a button to copy the validation results as a new XML document in XMLSpy. The XML has the same structure as the log file generated by a batch validation.

Validate instance files with selected Schema

Validation from the Windows File Explorer supports a new command to validate one or multiple XML instance files against a selected schema file. This command overwrites any present xsi:SchemaLocation or xsi:NoNamespaceSchemaLocation. If no schema location attribute is in the XML root element the schema is loaded as NoNamespaceSchemaLocation. This functionality uses the Xerces SAX validator and is therefore also handy on validating huge files without any schema already assigned.

Creation of batch log in UTF-8

The batch log file is now written in UTF-8 encoding. The UTF-16 format without a BOM which was used in the past caused some problems on reading. Several people requested to change this to UTF-8. Of course this is the better choice anyways.

Some weeks ago Altova released the new versions of their products. XMLSpy 2010 comes now with a brand new scripting tool to provide custom forms, macros and support for any kind of automation possible with the built-in API of XMLSpy:

New scripting tool in XMLSpy 2010

XMLSpy already comes with some sample scripts to show how to implement macros and forms. If you try it yourself and you start to write some code in the Script tool you will notice that there are also entry helpers available for the XMLSpy API. Very useful.

There are two macros available which I recommend to add them as commands to your XMLSpy menu. SearchPath and CloseAllButActiveDoc. SearchPath opens a dialog where you get a list of all files currently in the project together with all other files open in XMLSpy. You can then type a search string and the list is reduced to the ones which match (case in-sensitive, substring search). CloseAllButActiveDoc does what it says. With one click all documents but not the active one are closed.

Just use the Customize dialog from the Tools menu to add the macros as commands:

Customize dialog in XMLSpy

Use the “Display text” field to give the command a friendly name. Do the same for the SearchPath macro and then go to the Keyboard tab to assign a keyboard accelerator for easy access. After I did that my Tools menu in XMLSpy looks like this:

Modified Tools menu

Don’t be confused about the “Umschalt+Alt+S”. Umschalt just means Shift on a German system.

I can just recommend to check-out the new scripting tool in XMLSpy. With the help of a few macros this excellent XML editor can be even better…

Just a quick note. Yes, XML ValidatorBuddy is compatible with Windows 7. The tool integrates into the Windows File Explorer successfully also there.

However, as a side note. The tool is currently not available as 64 bit build. So it won’t be loaded into Windows File Explorer on a 64 bit system and the TortoiseXML menu is not available. But the tool can still be used inside of XMLSpy (which is also a 32 bit application) and as command line tool.