Converting xls or plain text file to xml

[sweetpotatop]

Hi,

I am wondering if there is way to convert a xls (with column headers)
or a plain text file to an xml file without knowing anything about
xsd.

I know in Excel you can actually convert the file to xml, given that
you provide the xsd. However, I have a client who doesn't know much
about xml, and I would like if there is anything she can do.

Actually, Excel is just one way she puts her data in, she can in fact
put the data into any editor provided that it is simple. Do you have
any suggestion in that case that she can still output something in
xml?

Please advice.

Thanks in advance. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Joseph J. Kesselman]

I am wondering if there is way to convert a xls (with column headers)
or a plain text file to an xml file without knowing anything about
xsd.

Sure. Schema validation is optional. For basic data processing, you can
often ignore schemas and just work with well-formed documents.

If you know how to read the source data, and you know how you want to
map that to XML, this is just a Simple Matter Of Programming.

Excel is using the schema because it's trying to be general purpose and
let the schema help guide that mapping. But hand-coding certainly works.

 

[Joe Fawcett]

Sure. Schema validation is optional. For basic data processing, you can
often ignore schemas and just work with well-formed documents.

If you know how to read the source data, and you know how you want to map
that to XML, this is just a Simple Matter Of Programming.

Excel is using the schema because it's trying to be general purpose and
let the schema help guide that mapping. But hand-coding certainly works.

Also you can save from Excel as XML (versions 2003+) without a custom
schema, you'll get Excel's own schema instead which can be hard work to use
but this depends on your specific scenario.