[xsd-users] generate HTML documentation with hyperlinks between XML, XSD and doxygen-generated HTML

[Boris Kolpackov]

Hi Erik,

Erik Sjölund <erik.sjolund at gmail.com> writes:

> Is there a way to generate HTML documentation that shows an example XML
> file with hyperlinks to the doxygen-generated C++ HTML documentation?

I don't understand the difference between "HTML documentation" and
"doxygen-generated C++ HTML documentation". What is "HTML documentation"
based on?

In any case, all XSD can do is generate Doxygen comments in C++ code.
It also copies documentation from XML Schema to these commens. So maybe
you can use some Doxygen directives to establish the hyperlinks you
want (e.g., link to sample XML documents from global elements which
are translated to parsing/serialization functions).


> If there is no software to generate such documentation today, do you have a
> tip of how to implement such software?

Nop, since I have no idea what that "HTML documentation" will contain,
what it is based on, etc, etc.


> Maybe by using the PSVI functionality in Xerces?

It is not easy to work with but you can get the schema model this way.
You could also use libxsd-frontent on which XSD is built.


> Or (in the future) by using the planned introspection functionality in
> CodeSynthesis XSD,
> http://www.codesynthesis.com/pipermail/xsd-users/2010-November/003082.html

That would we runtime introspection of specific C++ object model instances,
not compile-time introspection of (the entire) XML Schema. I don't think
you could use something like this for documentation generation.


> Are the plans for introspection functionality still in the pipeline?

Most likely not. There doesn't seem to be much interest in it so the
extra complexity and code bloat is probably not worth it.

Boris