CodeSmith Community

Let me start by saying, I haven't poked around codesmith too much, so I apologize if there is something out there that already explains this.  At the place that I work, we generally design our data structures using XSD files.  The xsd files use <xs:annotation><xs:documentation>... to document elements and attributes.  I would like to be able to convert these XSD files into c# classes similar to the way microsoft's XSD.exe program does, but with the annotations moved into xml summary comments, using generic lists instead of arrays, [insert other xsd.exe shortcomings here (there are many)].  I'm thinking that codesmith would help in this regard, but I'm not sure where to start.  Are there templates for this already that I can use as a starting point?

 Thanks in advance,

Jeff B.

Take a look at:

CodeSmith 4.x Samples -> Xml -> Entity.cst

This reads in a plain XML file that conforms to EntityMap.xsd and creates a simple class from it.
It's similar to what you're looking for. It may be a good starting point.

Theoretically, you could point an XmlProperty's schema to the XSD for XSDs.
You would also need the DTD for XSD and the DTD for datatypes. When I try this, though, I get a cryptic error:

There was an error reflecting type '_CodeSmith.pattern'. : There was an error reflecting type '_CodeSmith.element'.

Worst case, I would consider loading your XSD into an XmlDocument in CodeSmith, and using the XmlDocument's properties to drive your template's generation.

Hope this gives you some ideas.