XSD and plain text - xsd

Question

I have a rest/xml service that gives me the following...
<verse-unit unit-id="38009001">
<marker class="begin-verse" mid="v38009001"/>
<begin-chapter num="9"/><heading>Judgment on Israel&apos;s Enemies</heading>
<begin-block-indent/>
<begin-paragraph class="line-group"/>
<begin-line/><verse-num begin-chapter="9">1</verse-num>The burden of the word of the <span class="divine-name">Lord</span> is against the land of Hadrach<end-line class="br"/>
<begin-line class="indent"/>and Damascus is its resting place.<end-line class="br"/>
<begin-line/>For the <span class="divine-name">Lord</span> has an eye on mankind<end-line class="br"/>
<begin-line class="indent"/>and on all the tribes of Israel,<footnote id="f1">
A slight emendation yields <i>
For to the <span class="divine-name">Lord</span> belongs the capital of Syria and all the tribes of Israel
</i>
</footnote><end-line class="br"/>
</verse-unit>
I used visual studio to generate a schema from this and used XSD.EXE to generate classes that I can use to deserialize this mess into programmable stuff.
I got everything to work and it is deserialized perfectly (almost).
The problem I have is with the random text mixed throughout the child nodes. The generated verse-unit objects gives me a list of objects (begin-line, begin-block-indent, etc), and also another list of string objects that represent the bits of string throughout the xml.
Here is my schema
<xs:element maxOccurs="unbounded" name="verse-unit">
<xs:complexType mixed="true">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:element name="marker">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="class" type="xs:string" use="required" />
<xs:attribute name="mid" type="xs:string" use="required" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="begin-chapter">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="num" type="xs:unsignedByte" use="required" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="heading">
<xs:complexType mixed="true">
<xs:sequence minOccurs="0">
<xs:element name="span">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base="xs:string">
<xs:attribute name="class" type="xs:string" use="required" />
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="begin-block-indent" />
<xs:element name="begin-paragraph">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="class" type="xs:string" use="required" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="begin-line">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="class" type="xs:string" use="optional" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="verse-num">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base="xs:unsignedByte">
<xs:attribute name="begin-chapter" type="xs:unsignedByte" use="optional" />
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="end-line">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="class" type="xs:string" use="optional" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="end-paragraph" />
<xs:element name="end-block-indent" />
<xs:element name="end-chapter" />
</xs:choice>
</xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="unit-id" type="xs:unsignedInt" use="required" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
WHAT I NEED IS THIS. I need the random text that is NOT surrounded by an xml node to be represented by an object so I know the order that everything is in.
I know this is complicated, so let me try to simplify it.
<field name="test_field_0">
Some text I'm sure you don't want.
<subfield>Some text.</subfield>
More text you don't want.
</field>
I need the xsd to generate a field object with items that can have either a text object, or a subfield object. I need to no where the random text is within the child nodes.

Answer 1

You can try Xml Schema Mixed Content, which is well explained here: http://www.w3schools.com/schema/schema_complex_mixed.asp
I don't know much about the .net side. But this somewhat older article says that mixed mode is basically supported by xsd.exe: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164135.aspx

Answer 2

Well your problem starts here:
<xs:element name="begin-line">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="class" type="xs:string" use="optional" />
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
What this means is that a "begin line" type has an attribute called class (Which means the tag can have an attribute class like so: <begin-line class="lineclass">. However it is simply a type xs:string which means that all you get is a string.
I also don't know if this is an option, but if your XML could be made to have closing tags like this line for instance:
<begin-line class="indent"/>and Damascus is its resting place.<end-line class="br"/>
XML should be like this:
<begin-line class="indent"/>and Damascus is its resting place.</begin-line class="br">
I believe that if all the "line" tags were closed properly then the XSD generator might have a better time trying to derive what is inside the "begin-line" XML tag. Indeed if this is possible then you could rename begin-line to line and begin-chapter to chapter which should make your XML much more readable.
If it's not possible to update your code, then you are going to have to try your best with the string itself. I'm not sure if verses contain pure HTML, but if so you could parse the string inside the begin-line element as XML itself, using the library to jump between values and nodes (you might have to wrap a pair of tags around the string before trying to parse it though).