jingtrang 0.1.1

Wrapping jing and trang RELAX NG tools into Python script

jingtrang is wrapper of Java based command line tools for working with RELAX NG schemas.

Motivation

RELAX NG and especially compact form of describing XML structures is very efficient.

Unfortunately, with Python, support is rather limited:

• lxml allows validation of XML based schemas only

• lxml is based on libxml2 library, which has some minor limitations with regards to RELAX NG validation (in some cases you find error messages like “TODO”).

• package rnc2rng is promising conversion from XML to compact form, but is not really usable (it simply does not work).

In general, it is even not very easy finding command line validator for compact RELAX NG syntax.

RNV is very promising, but version on Sourceforge is rather old and version on GitHub does not have up todate installation instructions.

Other RELAX NG related tools mostly ignore compact syntax.

The only exception to this is jingtrang project hosted on googlecode.

Problem with this tool is, that it takes few steps more then is really convenient to have it easily installed for daily use from console.

As our team is working on Linux as well as on MS Windows, I was looking for cross platform command line solution.

As jingtrang commands (jing and trang) seem to be functioning very well, I have decided to write this jing and trang wrapper.

Delivering (py)jing and (py)trang command line tool

Original command line tools are named jing (validator) and trang (transforming schemas).

To prevent naming conflict, prefix py is used.

Command line interface is exactly the same, as if using it with java interpreter, only introductory “java -jar <jarfile.jar>” part is not necessary to call.

Here are described only most popular use cases, for more options, consult original jingtrang documentation (download from googlecode or elsewhere and see included html doc).

Installation

Prerequisites are:

• Python 2.7

• Java

• pip

Install it by:

$ pip install jingtrang

After that, two new scripts are installed:

• pyjing - RELAX NG validator

• pytrang - utility for transforming between XML/compact syntax/XSD/few more formats

Note

There is no need to install jing.jar and trang.jar files as they are already included in jintrang Python package.

pyjing - RELAX NG validator (XML as well as compact syntax)

pyjing serves for validating XML documents against XML as well as compact syntax RELAX NG schemas:

$ pyjing Jing version 20091111 usage: java com.thaiopensource.relaxng.util.Driver [-i] [-c] [-s] [-t] [-C catalogFile] [-e encoding] RNGFile XMLFile… RELAX NG is a schema language for XML See http://relaxng.org/ for more information.

To validate XML using XML syntax RELAX NG schema:

$ pyjing schema.rng file.xml

To validate using compact syntax schema, use -c switch:

$ pyjing -c schema.rnc file.xml

Validation of multiple XML files at once is possible:

$ pyjing schema.rnc samples/*.xml

pytrang - Schema format convertor

pytrang is “schema language translator” supporting not only RELAX NG XML and compact syntax, but also DTD, XSD. It even allows generating initial schema based on sample XML document.

Try to run it:

$ pytrang
fatal: at least two arguments are required
Trang version 20091111
usage: java com.thaiopensource.relaxng.translate.Driver [-C catalogFileOrUri] [-I rng|rnc|dtd|xml] [-O rng|rnc|dtd|xsd] [-i input-param] [-o output-param] inputFileOrUri ... outputFile

pytrang is able auto-detect format from file extension, so you can mostly directly convert without specifying explicitly, what input and output formats are to be used.

Converting compact syntax to XML one can be done by:

$ pytrang root.rnc root.rng

Note

If you use include in your schema, all included schemas will be converted too.

To generate initial RELAX NG schema in compact format from sample XML file, try:

$ pytrang sample.xml initial.rnc