So here’s a little utility that I’ve been using for myself for a while, but thought I’d release it in case it’s of use to anyone else.
There are three tasks I perform quite regularly when doing XML or BizTalk development:
-
Building and testing the XPath needed to retrieve a value from a given request/response
document - Validating a document against a schema
-
Generating BizUnit tests
cases (from an Xml instance doc, creating XPath statements to validate for all the
data in the document)
This tool does all three of these things:
XmlViewer main form
Generating a BizUnit Test Case
Although there are good tools on the market for doing 1. and 2. (e.g. Altova
XmlSpy and Stylus Studio)
most of them require installation and are not free.
And none of them generate BizUnit Test Cases!
I wanted a single EXE which would do the most common tasks for me.
Generating BizUnit Test Cases has so far been the most useful…
Although having a scratch pad to play with XPath queries is also very useful!
There is even a command line version, so if you need to generate a lot of BizUnit
Test Cases, you can do so in a batch file/script.
The utility is written as a single EXE, with no additional files needed (other than
.NET 2.0) and it doesn’t need to be installed.
I have a copy on my USB key and I run it from there.
Caveat: I use this tool every day, so most bugs have (hopefully) been eradicated.
So my apologies if you come across something I haven’t tested yet – please let me
know if you do.
Files available to download:
MSI Installer (contains all of the below files)
DanSharp.XmlViewer.Setup.msi (1.7MB)
Executable (Windows version)
XmlViewer.exe (80kb)
Executable (Command line version)
XmlViewer.com (80kb)
Documentation
DanSharp
XmlViewer Documentation v1.0.pdf (800kb PDF)
DanSharp
XmlViewer Documentation v1.0.doc (580kb Word 97 Doc)
If you come across bugs or have any comments, then leave a comment here, or email
me at:
xmlviewer@probertsolutions.com