Chapter 18 Working with XML

Complex type

In XML-Schema, a complex type allows elements in its content and may carry attributes. Complex types can be:

• Global, that is to say defined as a child of the schema element, in order to be reused among schema elements. You design a global complex type using a class with the <<complexType>> stereotype. In the following example, UsAddress is a complex type with a set of attributes that specify it:

<xsd:complexType name="UsAddress">
 <xsd:element name="name" type="Name"/>
 <xsd:element name="street" type="string"/>
 <xsd:element name="town" type="string"/>
 <xsd:element name="zip" type="Integer"/>
</xsd:complexType>

• Local to an element definition. In this case, you have to create a class with the <<element>> stereotype. You then need to set the isComplexType extended attribute of the class to True. This is to make sure that attributes defined in the <<element>> class are generated as a complex type:

<xsd:element name="customer">
 <xsd:complexType>
  <xsd:element name="name" type="int"/>
  <xsd:element name="address" type="int"/>
 </xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>

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