C# What is the easiest way to create an XSD for a xml-serializable class

Question

First of all, i am new to this topic, and after gathering a lot of background information i grew even more confused.

I've got a few classes, all of them are serializable, some implement IXmlSerializable. The classes are tagged with [XmlRoot], [XmlAttribute] and so on in the appropriate places.

What i am wondering about is how to create a simple XSD for each class, using the existing tags. I'm interested in both the manual and the programmatic way. If possible, i'd prefer to use tools integrated in VS2008.

Answer 1

Well, with IXmlSerializable all bets are off, as no schema is guaranteed. However, for the rest:

xsd.exe <assembly>.dll|.exe [/outputdir:] [/type: [...]]

From MSDN:

/t[ype]:typename Specifies the name of the type to create a schema for. You can specify multiple type arguments. If typename does not specify a namespace, Xsd.exe matches all types in the assembly with the specified type. If typename specifies a namespace, only that type is matched. If typename ends with an asterisk character (*), the tool matches all types that start with the string preceding the *. If you omit the /type option, Xsd.exe generates schemas for all types in the assembly.

...

Classes to XSD Generates an XML schema from a type or types in a runtime assembly file. The generated schema defines the XML format used by System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.