I've been looking for a decent XML editor for Eclipse since I started working with Fusebox 5.
My main requirements are:
- Validation of XML syntax
- Validation of XML against a DTD
- Location aware content assist - that only prompts with elements that are actually valid for the current location
I tried a few plugins
- Oribe XML - Not bad, validates against DTD, provides basic content assist, but not location aware
I'm Impressed :)
- Aptana Plugin - this offers an excellent all round web dev IDE for CSS, HTML, Javascript etc. - and also comes with an XML editor. Unfortunately this seems a little lacklustre in comparison to the other tools - no content assist or DTD validation as far as I could see
Reading through the Transfer Documentation, I noticed a link to the Web Tools Platform for Eclipse.
I was amazed - this seems to offer so much out of the box - I'm surprised I hadn't heard more hype about it.
To install, its simply a matter of going to the Help > Software Updates > Find and Install menu item, and selecting Callisto Discovery Site. This gives a huge list of available plugins - including the WTP. Selecting this prompts that there are other dependencies - clicking the Select Required selects them for you.
It is common practice within fusebox, to suffix the fusebox.xml and circuit.xml files with .cfm - this does prevent eclipse from associating the files with the XML editor.
This can be achieved by:
- Selecting General > Content types from the Preferences dialogue box
- Selecting Text > XML from the Content types: tree
- Click the Add... button, and adding the File associations &quo;fusebox.xml.cfm&quo; and &quo;circuit.xml.cfm&quo;
- Click the File Associations link at the top of the dialogue box
- Click the top Add... button, and add the &quo;fusebox.xml.cfm&quo; and &quo;circuit.xml.cfm&quo; file types
- Select each of the file types in turn, and the associated editors should appear in the Associated Editors list at the bottom.
- Click on XML Editor, and then click the Default button
Now fusebox.xml.cfm and circuit.xml.cfm should open with the WTP XML editor by default.
This offers all my specified features, plus a "Design" view - unfortunately this seems to load by default - but its no problem to click the tab and get the Source view.
NB
In order for DTD validation and content assist to operate, there must be a reference to the Doctype at the top of the XML document.I believe the reference DTD's are located at http://www.fusebox.org/fusebox.dtd and http://www.fusebox.org/circuit.dtd
UPDATE:
The files available from http://www.fusebox.org/ are not the latest - the latest DTD's should be included in the framework download, or can be downloaded directly from the repository: http://trac.fuseboxframework.org/fusebox/browser/framework/trunk/fusebox.dtd?format=raw and http://trac.fuseboxframework.org/fusebox/browser/framework/trunk/circuit.dtd?format=raw
I have a copy hosted locally on my development machine, so that the XML editor is not repeatedly retrieving the document from the internet - which can be a problem if i am working offline:
