Question

I’m an XML neophyte having some weird issues with parsing a schema. Here’s a minimal example you can run:

#! /usr/bin/env python
from lxml import etree
from StringIO import StringIO

XML = StringIO('''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<xs:schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/"
    xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
    <xs:import namespace="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" />
    <xs:complexType name="ArrayOfDocumentLink">
        <xs:complexContent>
            <xs:restriction base="soapenc:Array">
                <xs:attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType" wsdl:arrayType="tns:DocumentLink[]"/>
            </xs:restriction>
        </xs:complexContent>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:schema>''')

etree.XMLSchema(file=XML)

gives

lxml.etree.XMLSchemaParseError: complex type 'ArrayOfDocumentLink', attribute 'base': The QName value '{http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/}Array' does not resolve to a(n) simple type definition., line 7

I’m clueless. Various mailing lists and this SO question suggest that there’s a workaround that involves collecting all the definitions into an external file. But that doesn’t really help a neophyte understand what’s going on. Any insight is much appreciated!

Answer 1

You’ve indicated that you need to import schema definitions for the namespace http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/, but you haven’t told the processor where to find these definitions. Try adding (to the xs:import) a schemaLocation attribute that tells the processor where to find a schema document for this namespace.