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…
Application, external tools, ValidatorBuddy, XSL
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.
ValidatorBuddy, Xerces-C, xmlspy
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…
xmlspy
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.
You might have read this already in the Altova newsletter or via some press release. Altova released new versions of all products a couple of days ago with a lot of additional benefits for the users. Of course you can go directly to Altova and read all about it but there are also some articles on XML Aficionado which explain the major new features in a more personal way. A good starting point to digg deeper because every article also has a lot of links pointing directly to the pages for a more detailed description of the current topic.
The row of articles on XML Aficionado about the latest release of Altova are:
