xsd to xml robot task

[andboje]

Hi, I am an engineering student seeking some advice, since my programming experience is very limited.

Task to be done:
I have to create xml files to be used in a robot simulation program (DELMIA). These files contain data of the tasks the robots must carry out, e.g. names of parts to be grabbed, x,y,z positions to move to etc.
This should be done automatically, based on data from an external source not determined yet, but I am thinking database, excel or .csv.
Several files would have to be created every day, so minimal human interaction is preferable.

The xml file can vary depending on e.g. the number of tasks the robot must run through. So an element and sub-elements in the xml file can occur several times with different attribute values for each instance. (One xml file might tell the robot to pick and place 3 parts and then weld them)

I have a xsd file at my disposal. (attached as txt file)

Question:
I have been searching the net the last couple of days, and have come across a few possibilities. I would like some advice on which would be the easiest and best for the task at hand, if they can do the job at all, or if there is something better around?

1) xsd.exe and serialization
- creating a class file from the xsd and using it to piece together a custom xml file in some way.

The info I have on these two seems mainly to be about changing existing xml files and creating xml files by hand. But I could easily be wrong

2) XPath

3) LINQ to XML

I hope you have some insight on what direction is the easiest for me to continue?

Best Regards
Anders

[Arjay]

Do you have a sample of the xml?

[andboje]

This is a file exported from the simulation program. There is just a few Activity elements in the ActivityList which describes the robot movements.

In reality the xml files to be created would maybe have more than 100.

Thanks for taking an interest in this, I really appreciate it.

[Arjay]

The approach I would take is to use Xml Serialization. Check out my response in this thread: http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=507807

Take a portion of the xml file and try to serialize it.

See if you can do it. Post back if you run into trouble.

[andboje]

I ran into trouble

Is there a clever way to handle "nested" elements?

ResourceType is located inside OLPData, but how do I get both of them out in the same xml structure?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.IO;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(OLPData));
        TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter("Delmia file.xml");
        OLPData olpData = new OLPData();
        olpData.Context = "Some context";
        olpData.DownloaderRootDirectory = "Some download directory";
        olpData.LogFileName = "Some filename";

        ResourceType resourceType = new ResourceType();
        resourceType.id = "Some id";

        serializer.Serialize(Console.Out, olpData);
        Console.Read();
    }
}

[Arjay]

What do your classes and xml related attributes look like?