Question

I am trying to write some XML schema code to specify that a particular element ‘abc’ may have a child element with name ‘xyz’, and that element may have any attributes, and any child elements.

At the moment I have this:

    <xs:element name="abc">
      <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
          <xs:element name="xyz">
            <xs:complexType>
              <xs:sequence>
                <xs:any/>
              </xs:sequence>
              <xs:anyAttribute/>               
            </xs:complexType>
          </xs:element>
        </xs:sequence>
      </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>

But when I validate my XML against the schema, I get validation failures complaining about the child elements of the xyz element.

Answer 1

Your xs:any doesn’t have any information attached to it, so it is looking for schema defined elements. If you want to be slack in your interpretation of the sub-elements, try this:

<xs:element name="abc">
  <xs:complexType>
    <xs:sequence>
      <xs:element name="xyz">
        <xs:complexType>
          <xs:sequence>
            <xs:any processContents="lax" />
          </xs:sequence>
          <xs:anyAttribute/>               
        </xs:complexType>
      </xs:element>
    </xs:sequence>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

This should get you past validation. If you have any expectation on the well-formedness of xyz’s content, you can include a namespace using the namespace attribute for xs:any, and pull in another schema for that information.

Good luck, and I hope this helps!