XML Tribune

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…