CLI - Formal XML Definition
by Martyn Taylor
Providing a formal deffinition of the XML for an API, makes using the API, in particular creating and maintaining client applications that utilise the API much simpler, and far clearer for a developer.
There are an array of tools that provide class generation, and automatic marshalling and unmarshalling of objects, generated straight from a formally defined XML Document, for ruby, this project looks to offer these functions: https://github.com/rubyjedi/soap4r .
In my experience writing Java and Android clients, I have found that the time spent creating an XSD or other formal XML definition, repays 10 fold in development time, and also makes keeping clients up to date alot simpler. For DC Client I ended up writing my own: https://github.com/mtaylor/deltacloud-tools/blob/master/DeltaCloudClient/...
But, I think it would be better as a whole to adopt this approach from the start. It would not only benefit the creation of the CLI but also anyone else who needs to utilise these APIs
Martyn
12 years, 11 months