I actually blogged in great detail about this in a previous blog/life…which I can’t find anywhere. I couldn’t even find it with http://web.archive.org, imagine that.

Code generation is something that I grew to really appreciate on a previous project where we decided that every potential message would exist as an XSD (or compilation of XSDs). I’ve been toying/working with Ruby a bit lately, and once again have the opportunity to do some code generation. First, let me state that I’m not a fan of SOAP. I’m learning to really appreciate the simplicity of REST/HTTP - so even though I’m pointing at the soap4r project I wish this stood by itself.

Once again, I have a few schemas that represent messages - messages I’d really like to be able to pump out as HTTP POSTs to a REST servlet with ruby.

So, here it is: xsd2ruby.rb. This little ruby in the rough is part of the soap4r package. If you “install” via the gem you get a executable in /usr/local/bin which you can run from where ever. This is how it works:

<code>
Usage: /usr/local/bin/xsd2ruby.rb --xsd xsd_location [options]
  xsd_location: filename or URL

Example:
  /usr/local/bin/xsd2ruby.rb --xsd myapp.xsd --classdef foo

Options:
  --xsd xsd_location
  --classdef [filenameprefix]
  --mapping_registry
  --mapper
  --module_path [Module::Path::Name]
  --force
  --quiet
</code>

Once you have the classes, you can build objects in a breeze, and marshall ’em:

<code>
@xmlString = XSD::Mapping.obj2xml(@message, nil, nil)
</code>

Way cool stuff! Hopefully, this blog sticks around a bit longer than my last attempt…