Project 31-A

Introduction While consuming third-party RSS feeds, I found I had to relearn how to deal with XML data. This post is meant to prepare any developer who needs to consume XML which they do not control. While I used RSS feeds, any XML will apply. I wanted to change the meta data and data of the XML file into a model of data that I could control with .Net classes and conventional data storage.   This post is organized to take you from an xml file to .Net classes able to consume, serialize, and test the xml. Generating an XSD file from an XML file using Xsd.exe The first step is to make sure you have the XML Schema Definition tool, xsd.exe , installed. It is part of the .Net Framework tools . Make sure the executable location is part of the system path , user path, or command prompt path. On my computer the path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin” and I added it to the system path so it is available at any command prompt, regardless of the user.   Se...

In case you don’t want to add all the RSS feeds on the Windows Azure Service Dashboard , I’ve created an OPML file you can import into your ( Google ) reader. The file is up on Windows Live Skydrive but in case you can’t get to that, the file contents are below. If you found I’m missing a link or the link has changed, please let me know.   <? xml-stylesheet type ="text/xsl" href ="http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn_opmlpretty.xsl" version ="1.0" ? > < opml version ="1.1" > < head > < title > Azure Service Dashboard Feeds </ title > </ head > < body > < outline text ="AppFabric Access Control [East Asia]" title ="AppFabric Access Control [East Asia]" type ="rss" xmlUrl ="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/support/status/RSSFeed.aspx?RSSFeedCode=NSACSEA" htmlUrl ="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/support/status/se...