Question

Edit: I don’t think I asked this question very well. I’m completely re-phrasing it

All:
I am trying to represent the following XML in XSD (I’m working with the Visual Studio XSD editor, as I really don’t know XSD very well).

Here's the XML:

<TheParentNode>
  <AnElement ID="x">123</AnElement>
</TheParentNode>

I want to specify that the value of AnElement must be a number. I also want to put some attributes into AnElement.

What should the XSD look like?

In the Visual Studio designer, I can see how to make AnElement a complex type, and that seems to be the only way to define attributes for it. However, if I do that, I don’t see a way to specify that the value of AnElement must be a number.

Do I need to use complex types? What would your XSD code look like?

Answer 1

You need to define a complexType with a simpleContent:

    <xs:element name="AnElement">
      <xs:complexType>
        <xs:simpleContent>
          <xs:extension base="xs:int">
            <xs:attribute name="ID" type="xs:string" />
          </xs:extension>
        </xs:simpleContent>
      </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>

That should do the trick. And I’m afraid that’s the only way to achieve this. Is it really so bad??

UPDATE:
After your update, this is the XSD you’ll need:

<xs:schema id="TheParentNode" xmlns="" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:element name="TheParentNode">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="AnElement">
          <xs:complexType>
            <xs:simpleContent>
              <xs:extension base="xs:int">
                <xs:attribute name="ID" type="xs:string" />
              </xs:extension>
            </xs:simpleContent>
          </xs:complexType>
        </xs:element>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

You are aware I hope that if you have the XML file open in Visual Studio, you can go to the “XML” menu and pick “Create schema” from it? That does give you a good start usually for your XSD files.

Marc