Easy generation of XML struct definition

Writing struct definitions that match XML file is tedious.

There are tools that can generate that definition based on sample XML file.

A downside of such approach is that if sample XML doesn't have all the fields, they won't be generated.

XML To Go online tool

XML To Go online tool allows to do it in a web browser. Paste XML sample on the left, get Go struct definition on the right.

Zek

Zek is a Go program that reads XML from a file or stdin and prints Go struct definition to stdout.

Chidley

You can use chidley to automatically generate struct definitions from sample XML file.

Install the tool with go get -u github.com/gnewton/chidley.

chidley sample.xml will print Go struct definitions deduced from sample.xml to standard out.

Run chidley to list all cmd-line options.

Options that I find useful:

-X : sort generated structs by order in XML file (default is alphabetically)
-a "" : prefix for attribute names (default is Attr)
-e "" : prefix for struct names (default is C i.e. by default struct name for XML element Api would CApi; this makes it just Api)
-t : by default all fields are strings. This flag tries to infer type from values

All options:

chidley <flags> xmlFileName|url
xmlFileName can be .gz or .bz2: uncompressed transparently
Usage of chidley:
  -A string
        The tag name attribute to use for the max length Go annotations
  -B    Add database metadata to created Go structs
  -C    Structs have underscores instead of CamelCase; how chidley used to produce output; includes name spaces (see -n)
  -D string
        Base directory for generated Java code (root of maven project) (default "java")
  -F    Assume complete representative XML and collapse tags with only a single string and no attributes
  -G    Only write generated Go structs to stdout (default true)
  -I    If XML decoding error encountered, continue
  -J    Generated Java code for Java/JAXB
  -K    Do not change the case of the first letter of the XML tag names (default true)
  -L    Ignore lower case XML tags
  -M string
        Set name of CDATA string field (default "Text")
  -N string
        The tag name to use for the max length Go annotations
  -P string
        Java package name (rightmost in full package name
  -S string
        The tag name separator to use for the max length Go annotations (default ":")
  -T string
        Field template for the struct field definition. Can include annotations. Default is for XML and JSON (default "{{.GoName}} {{.GoTypeArrayOrPointer}}{{.GoType}} `xml:\"{{if notEmpty .XMLNameSpace}}{{.XMLNameSpace}} {{end}}{{.XMLName}},omitempty\" json:\"{{.XMLName}},omitempty\"`")
  -W    Generate Go code to convert XML to JSON or XML (latter useful for validation) and write it to stdout
  -X    Sort output of structs in Go code by order encounered in source XML (default is alphabetical order)
  -Z int
        The padding on the max length tag attribute
  -a string
        Prefix to attribute names (default "Attr")
  -c    Read XML from standard input
  -d    Debug; prints out much information
  -e string
        Prefix to struct (element) names; must start with a capital (default "C")
  -h string
        List of XML tags to ignore; comma separated
  -k string
        App name for Java code (appended to ca.gnewton.chidley Java package name)) (default "jaxb")
  -m    Validate the field template. Useful to make sure the template defined with -T is valid
  -n    Use the XML namespace prefix as prefix to JSON name
  -p    Pretty-print json in generated code (if applicable)
  -r    Progress: every 50000 input tags (elements)
  -t    Use type info obtained from XML (int, bool, etc); default is to assume everything is a string; better chance at working if XMl sample is not complete
  -u    Filename interpreted as an URL
  -x    Add XMLName (Space, Local) for each XML element, to JSON

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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