This problem recently came up while discussing a project that will use FpML documents. FpML is an evolving standard that aims to be the industry standard protocol for complex financial products. Its an extensive project with a good deal of support from major players and a sharp talent pool behind it.

I’ll try to explain how code generation facilities built into the .Net framework can provide us with a basic usable class library that encapsulates the FpML protocol.

We begin by downloading the relevant schemas from the FpML website (requires free registration) and extracting them to a local folder (C:\FpML).

Then we fire up Visual Studio and create a new Console Application. At this point you maybe wondering if it wouldn’t be simpler to just use XSD.EXE for the code generation. Unfortunately XSD.EXE has difficulty resolving external schemas.

using System;
using System.CodeDom;
using System.CodeDom.Compiler;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Schema;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using Microsoft.CSharp;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    internal class Program
    {
        public const string rootFolder = @"C:\FpML\xml\";

        private static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            XmlSchema rootSchema = GetSchemaFromFile("fpml-main-4-2.xsd");

            var schemaSet = new List<XmlSchemaExternal>();

            ExtractIncludes(rootSchema, ref schemaSet);

            var schemas = new XmlSchemas { rootSchema };

            schemaSet.ForEach(schemaExternal => schemas.Add(GetSchemaFromFile(schemaExternal.SchemaLocation)));

            schemas.Compile(null, true);

            var xmlSchemaImporter = new XmlSchemaImporter(schemas);

            var codeNamespace = new CodeNamespace("Hosca.FpML4_2");
            var xmlCodeExporter = new XmlCodeExporter(codeNamespace);

            var xmlTypeMappings = new List<XmlTypeMapping>();

            foreach (XmlSchemaType schemaType in rootSchema.SchemaTypes.Values)
                xmlTypeMappings.Add(xmlSchemaImporter.ImportSchemaType(schemaType.QualifiedName));
            foreach (XmlSchemaElement schemaElement in rootSchema.Elements.Values)
                xmlTypeMappings.Add(xmlSchemaImporter.ImportTypeMapping(schemaElement.QualifiedName));

            xmlTypeMappings.ForEach(xmlCodeExporter.ExportTypeMapping);

            CodeGenerator.ValidateIdentifiers(codeNamespace);

            foreach (CodeTypeDeclaration codeTypeDeclaration in codeNamespace.Types)
            {
                for (int i = codeTypeDeclaration.CustomAttributes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)
                {
                    CodeAttributeDeclaration cad = codeTypeDeclaration.CustomAttributes[i];
                    if (cad.Name == "System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute")
                        codeTypeDeclaration.CustomAttributes.RemoveAt(i);
                }
            }

            using (var writer = new StringWriter())
            {
                new CSharpCodeProvider().GenerateCodeFromNamespace(codeNamespace, writer, new CodeGeneratorOptions());

                //Console.WriteLine(writer.GetStringBuilder().ToString());

                File.WriteAllText(Path.Combine(rootFolder, "FpML4_2.Generated.cs"), writer.GetStringBuilder().ToString());
            }

            Console.ReadLine();
        }

        private static XmlSchema GetSchemaFromFile(string fileName)
        {
            using (var fs = new FileStream(Path.Combine(rootFolder, fileName), FileMode.Open))
                return XmlSchema.Read(fs, null);
        }

        private static void ExtractIncludes(XmlSchema xmlSchema, ref List<XmlSchemaExternal> schemaList)
        {
            foreach (XmlSchemaExternal include in xmlSchema.Includes)
            {
                if (!schemaList.Select(s => s.SchemaLocation).Contains(include.SchemaLocation))
                    schemaList.Add(include);

                if (include.Schema == null)
                {
                    XmlSchema schema = GetSchemaFromFile(include.SchemaLocation);

                    ExtractIncludes(schema, ref schemaList);
                }
                else
                    ExtractIncludes(include.Schema, ref schemaList);
            }
        }
    }
}

Running this generates the following code:

FpML4_2.Generated.cs (1.10 mb)