[ADVANCED-DOTNET] Web services, DataSets and making use of XSDs...

[Ben Joyce]

Hi all.

I'm just getting in to some XSD programming and could do with some
advice.  This is quite a lengthy email for which I apologise in
advance.

I've been asked to create a webservice with some methods, one of which
is to resturn some customer data.

I am at the point where I would usually return my data like this:

dstDataset.Tables(0).WriteXml(Response.OutputStream)

Then the calling code would pick apart the response.

However, I am now required to send a response something like this...
which i believe is based on an XSD:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<CustomerFindResponse
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance";
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="FindCustomer_response_OK.xsd">
       <Return>true</Return>
       <CustomerList>
               <Customer>
                       <Dealer></Dealer>
                       <TitleCode>5</TitleCode>
                       <Initials>A</Initials>
                       <CustomerNo>0</CustomerNo>
                       <Customertype>P</Customertype>
                       <Foren>ANDREW JAMES</Foren>
                       <Surn>PALMER</Surn>
                       <Company></Company>
                       <AddLine1></AddLine1>
                       <AddLine2>HASLINGTON</AddLine2>
                       <AddLine3></AddLine3>
                       <AddPosttown>Crewe</AddPosttown>
                       <PostCode></PostCode>
                       <HouseNumber>35</HouseNumber>
               </Customer>
               <Customer>
                       <Dealer></Dealer>
                       <TitleCode>3</TitleCode>
                       <Initials>A</Initials>
                       <CustomerNo>0</CustomerNo>
                       <Customertype>P</Customertype>
                       <Foren>ANDREW JAMES</Foren>
                       <Surn>PALMER</Surn>
                       <Company></Company>
                       <AddLine1></AddLine1>
                       <AddLine2>HASLINGTON</AddLine2>
                       <AddLine3></AddLine3>
                       <AddPosttown>Crewe</AddPosttown>
                       <PostCode></PostCode>
                       <HouseNumber>35</HouseNumber>
               </Customer>
       </CustomerList>
</CustomerFindResponse>

And the accompanying XSD:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema";
elementFormDefault="qualified">
 <xs:element name="CustomerFindResponse">
   <xs:complexType>
     <xs:sequence>
       <xs:element ref="Return"/>
       <xs:element ref="CustomerList"/>
     </xs:sequence>
   </xs:complexType>
 </xs:element>
 <xs:element name="Return" type="xs:boolean"/>
 <xs:element name="CustomerList">
   <xs:complexType>
     <xs:sequence>
       <xs:element maxOccurs="unbounded" ref="Customer"/>
     </xs:sequence>
   </xs:complexType>
 </xs:element>
 <xs:element name="Customer">
   <xs:complexType>
     <xs:sequence>
       <xs:element ref="Dealer"/>
       <xs:element ref="TitleCode"/>
       <xs:element ref="Initials"/>
       <xs:element ref="CustomerNo"/>
       <xs:element ref="Customertype"/>
       <xs:element ref="Foren"/>
       <xs:element ref="Surn"/>
       <xs:element ref="Company"/>
       <xs:element ref="AddLine1"/>
       <xs:element ref="AddLine2"/>
       <xs:element ref="AddLine3"/>
       <xs:element ref="AddPosttown"/>
       <xs:element ref="PostCode"/>
       <xs:element ref="HouseNumber"/>
     </xs:sequence>
   </xs:complexType>
 </xs:element>
 <xs:element name="Dealer" type="xs:integer"/>
 <xs:element name="TitleCode" type="xs:integer"/>
 <xs:element name="Initials" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="CustomerNo" type="xs:integer"/>
 <xs:element name="Customertype" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="Foren" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="Surn" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="Company" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="AddLine1" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="AddLine2" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="AddLine3" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="AddPosttown" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="PostCode" type="xs:string"/>
 <xs:element name="HouseNumber" type="xs:string"/>
</xs:schema>

My question is this: how do I use the XSD file in my code to create an
XML document based on the schema?  I believe once i have created such
an entity i could manually walk the dataset and create new XML nodes.
Is this the right way to do it?  Am I even on the right track?

My cheap and nasty alternative is to return the data like this:

strXML = "<CustomerFindResponse
xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"";
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation=""FindCustomer_response_OK.xsd"">"
strXML += "<Return>true</Return>"
dstDataset.Tables(0).TableName = "Customer"
Dim strData As String = dstDataset.GetXml()
strXML += strData
strXML += "</CustomerFindResponse>"

Return strXML

But this involves a degree of hard-coding and whatsmore the returned
XML is escaped (the < and > appear as &lt; and &gt; respectively)

sigh - it's a bit of a nightmare!

Any ideas or advice would really be appreciated.

Cheers,

Ben

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