Create a GUI from a XML-Schema automatically

Question

I have to write a desktop application to edit data stored in a XML File. The Format is defined by a XML Schema File (.xsd). The Format is quite complex. Are there tools which can generate a basic gui automatically? It's not yet decided which language to use. I have experience in Python and C++ using wxWidgets and C# (.Net1) using Windows Forms.

Answer 1

Go For PyQt:

http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/download

Download The Qt Developers tool to generate the gui automatically

www.qtsoftware.com/products/developer-tools

For schema validation try lxml

codespeak.net/lxml/validation.html

Answer 2

I'm not exactly sure if I can be completely of help to you @Adrian, but I've been researching something very close to what you are discussing...

Using something like Linq to XML may assist you in the validation of the data being entered, as there are already methods that will validate the data for you.

As I recall, there are a few tools that allow you dynamically create the app... link

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

One solution could be to write an XSL transformation that converts the XML file into a XAML file.

Answer 4

Using XSL, like StackedCrooked said, where another target could be XForms, although that's more browser-oriented than desktop-oriented.

Answer 5

If the GUI will be simple and you don't bother about the geometry of the components(widgets) in the dialogs, Qt will be a good option. Actually I'm working on a similar task for my project, and my goal was to validate the form data by using an XML file.

Using Qt, it is possible to access any widget on the dialog at run-time by using its object name. So that validation can be applied to the dialog contents.

Creating any dialogs will be even easier, since you will have the widget type and certain information and using layouts, fascinating results can be obtained.

Answer 6

Xopus offers an editor that will validate against your schema. EMC's Documentum xDB offers a client-side XForm engine.

Answer 7

It's worth taking a look at Jaxfront which is able to consume an XSD and generate a form (including HTML). You can also supply an instance XML document for it to load into the GUI, and save out instance XML documents too.

I tried it with one of our fairly complicated XSD's and it worked pretty well.

Sadly it's written in Java - I'm still looking for something which can generate .NET web forms or XAML/WPF! In fact even XFORMS would be good.