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I am defining an XSD. I need to define an element which takes date in format yyyymmdd. How can I define a restriction in XSD to only accept this format?

Bhushan Bhangale
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2 Answers2

14

You could always define it as a restricted simple type based on a string, restricted by a regular expression:

<xs:simpleType name="FormattedDateType">
   <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
       <xs:pattern value="\d{8}"/>
   </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

If you want to get really smart, you can tweak the regular expression to be even more of a match for a date (e.g. contains the info that month can only be 01 - 12 and so forth):

<xs:simpleType name="FormattedDateType">
   <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
       <xs:pattern value="\d{4}(0[1-9]|1[012])(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])"/>
   </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

Marc

marc_s
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  • Marc I knew this expression but I thought its not the right way. I thought I need to extend xs:date and override the format. – Bhushan Bhangale Jun 26 '09 at 09:04
  • Quite honestly, I never thought of restricting xs:date or xs:dateTime, and setting a pattern - not sure if it'll work - give it a try! – marc_s Jun 26 '09 at 10:23
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    You can't extend a simple type (not via xs:extension) and you can't restrict something to be not valid as part of the base. A 'yyyymmdd' formatted date is not a valid xs:date (it requires the 'yyyy-mm-dd' format) so you need something like marc_s' solution – Nic Gibson Jun 26 '09 at 10:24
  • Shouldn't be a problem though. You can just use an adapter to get the actual stringly-typed date value in your app. – Cheeso Jun 29 '09 at 20:37
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If you want the format of MM/DD/YYYY in xml then this code can help you for this format

<xs:element name="StartDate">
   <xs:simpleType>
      <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
         <xs:pattern value="\d{2}[/]\d{2}[/]\d{4}"/>
     <xs:length value="10"/>
      </xs:restriction>
   </xs:simpleType>
</xs:element>
Sunil
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