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RE: Possible to use wildcards in schema element names?

• From: "David Lee" <dlee@calldei.com>
• To: "'Kevin Gibbs'" <kevin.kgibbs@gmail.com>, "'xml-dev'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:30:39 -0500

>> My question then is, "Is it possible, in the schema, to use wildcards
?? or regex for the field elements?

By "field elements' I presume you mean the element names ?
No. Its not possible (Someone tell me I'm wrong !)
What you *can* do is use xquery or xslt to transform this "wild"document into something more "reasonable".
XSLT and XQuery could convert the document into something much more data/xml friendly like

   <person>
	<name>bill</name>
	<fields>
		<field>1</field>
		<field>2</field>
		...
	</fields>
  </person>
  ...





----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Gibbs [mailto:kevin.kgibbs@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 5:10 PM
To: xml-dev
Subject:  Possible to use wildcards in schema element names?


Hi all,
I'm trying to generate a schema for some xml (for which I have no
control over the format)
Consider the following xml example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<document>
   <name>Bill</name>
   <field1>abc</field1> <!-- any number of fields -->
   <field2>def</field2>
   <field3>ghi</field3>
   <field4>jkl</field4>

   <name>John</name>
   <field3>uvw</field3> <!-- need not start with field1 -->
   <field4>xyz</field4>
</document>

As you can see, each "name" element has a varying number of "field*" siblings.
So, I've come with the following attempt (the eagle-eyed among you,
may notice that I'm no expert):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
elementFormDefault="qualified">
 <xs:element name="document">
   <xs:complexType>
     <xs:sequence>
       <xs:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
         <xs:element ref="name"/>
         <xs:element ref="field" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
       </xs:choice>
     </xs:sequence>
   </xs:complexType>
 </xs:element>
 <xs:element name="name" type="xs:NCName"/>
 <xs:element name="field*" type="xs:NCName"/> <!-- How is it possible
to perform wildcard? -->
</xs:schema>

My question then is, "Is it possible, in the schema, to use wildcards
or regex for the field elements?

Many thanks in anticipation - Jimmy

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• References:
  • Possible to use wildcards in schema element names?
    • From: Kevin Gibbs <kevin.kgibbs@gmail.com>