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…

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.

Sometimes I get feedback from people who are installing XML ValidatorBuddy that there was “no application visible” after running the installer or like “didn’t install at all”.

I know that most of the people expect some program to run or a desktop icon to appear after the installation of any new software. I was thinking about this for XML ValidatorBuddy also but nothing useful came to my mind until yet. The reason for this is that currently ValidatorBuddy doesn’t have any real executable beside the command-line tool. So let me summarize what is offered now:

1. A Windows File Explorer shell extension to provide quick and easy access to XML validation and batch processing.
2. A command-line tool to allow scheduled batch processing like XML validation of thousand of files.
3. A plugin for the popular XML editor Altova XMLSpy.

As you can see no obvious way to start anything after installation to present it to the user. Of yourse, any ideas are much appreciated!

Today I read by chance a post in the oXygen XML editor forum (here) if it is possible to get the XSL which is used in the last step of Schematron validation to validate the XML instance. To make it short: in oXygen there is no special functionality for it, with ValidatorBuddy in XMLSpy you get it with one click.

Some background: Usually, to validate a XML instance document using Schematron a XSL stylesheet which is generated from the Schematron schema is applied to the input XML. To generate the XSL to validate the XML another XSL stylesheet that implements the Schematron definition is used. In addition you also need to do some pre-processing to resolve the includes at least. Guess what, this is also done with the help of a stylesheet.

To simplify this for the user and to save time XML ValidatorBuddy has a button to get the final XSL used to validate the XML with one click:

Get XSLT button for Schematron

On the upper-right corner you can see the “Get XSLT” button. If a Schematron stylesheet is assigned to the XML a new .xsl document will be created in XMLSpy with the stylesheet to validate any instance document.

You can then save this stylesheet and apply it to any XML with simple XSL transformation or you can use it to debug the Schematron schema in the built-in debugger of XMLSpy.