Question

I am writing a XSD schema file in Visual Studio 2010. I want to define a complex type to not be required and have unlimited entires in the xml. I used the minOccurs and maxOccurs attributes but I am getting an error in the editor that these attributes (minOccurs / maxOccurs) are not allowed. I can add them to simple types but not complex types. How do you define that a complex type can have 0 to many occurances?

Here is the xsd I was using:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:element name="patient" minOccurs="0"  maxOccurs="unbounded">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="to" type="xs:string"/>
        <xs:element name="from" type="xs:string"/>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Answer 1

That should still be valid XSD syntax. Is the VS editor just highlighting it and telling you that it’s not allowed? It may just be reporting incorrectly.

Edit: Oh, you need a sequence of the complex types!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:element name="patients">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="patient" minOccurs="0"  maxOccurs="unbounded">
          <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
              <xs:element name="to" type="xs:string"/>
              <xs:element name="from" type="xs:string"/>
            </xs:sequence>
          </xs:complexType>
        </xs:elemennt>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>