How To: Validate an Ed-Fi XML File

Owned by Stephen Fuqua
Dec 13, 2024

Contents

Introduction

Audience

This document is for technical professionals who work with educational data, and in particular, the creation of XML data files that conform to the Ed-Fi Data Standard. These XML data files are often exported from source data systems such as student information systems and assessment systems into Ed-Fi Standard Interchange Schema.

Prerequisites

To gain the most benefit from this information, the reader should already be familiar with the following knowledge areas:

Overview

Ed-Fi adopters may need to run validation checks against Ed-Fi data exchange XML files that have been created according to the Ed-Fi Data Standard and Ed-Fi Standard Interchange Schemas. 

The following documentation describes how to run validation using Notepad++. This requires local copies of the Ed-Fi XML Core and Interchange Schema which can be downloaded from the Ed-Fi Alliance GitHub Ed-Fi-Standard repository.

For more information about the Ed-Fi data model and Ed-Fi Standard Interchange Schemas, see the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model and Ed-Fi Interchange Schema Documentation available online at http://www.ed-fi.org/tech-docs.

Validate XML Using Notepad++

This section provides a step-by-step guide to validating Ed-Fi XML using Notepad++

Step 1: Install the Notepad++ XML Tools Plugin

Install Notepad++ using instructions available from : https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ The version you install must have the Plugins Admin feature (the most recent version has this feature).

In Notepad++ go to the Plugins menu and select Plugins Admin. Find XML Tools in the list, check the box, and click the Install button.

Step 2: Download XML Schema Files

In the Ed-Fi Standard GitHub repo (https://github.com/Ed-Fi-Alliance/Ed-Fi-Standard) locate the version of the standard you want to validate against. Within that folder, locate the Interchange XSD and Ed-Fi-Core.xsd field. 

  • Download Ed-Fi-Core.xsd
  • Download the interchange XSD files you will need. For example, if you are validating a student enrollment XML, you will need Interchange-StudentEnrollment.xsd

Put these files into your working folder.

Step 3: Update the XML File Schema Location Path

Open the Ed-Fi XML file to validate in Notepad++. Before validating, you will need to update the schemaLocation path to match where you stored the Ed-Fi Interchange schema locally.

Replace the '../../../../XSLT2/References/Ed-Fi-Standard/Schemas/' portion of the schemaLocation with your local file path, leaving both the 'http://ed-fi.org/0320 ' and interchange file name unchanged.

For example, if you saved the Ed-Fi schemas to your C drive and were validating an AssessmentMetadata XML file, your schemaLocation would appear as follows: 

xsi:schemaLocation="http://ed-fi.org/0320 C:/Ed-Fi-Standard/v3.2/Schemas/Bulk/Interchange-AssessmentMetadata.xsd"

Step 4: Validate the XML File

Go to the Plugins menu → XML Tools → Validate Now. If validation is successful, you will see the following:

Otherwise, an Information window will appear with validation error messages.