Declarative mechanism for defining a hierarchy of objects

• US 7,464,329 B2
• Filed: 02/10/2006
• Issued: 12/09/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/16/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Relyea, Robert A., King, Joseph, Bogdan, Jeff, Wilson, Chris, Grambihler, Roger
• Primary Examiner(s): Hutton; Doug
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tran; Quoc A
• Application Number:
  US11/351,649
• Publication Number:
  US 20060129920A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,033 Days
• Field of Search: 715/513, 715/530, 715/845, 715234-239, 704/1, 709/203, 717/100
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4493 Object persistence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

Described is a method and data structure that enables an object to be specified declaratively within a markup document. The markup document may be XML-based. In accordance with the invention, the object is written based on a mapping. The mapping includes a URL attribute for defining a location for a definition file having assemblies and namespaces where classes are specified. The class name is mapped to the markup document as a tag name. Properties and events of a class are mapped to attributes of the tag associated with the class. The method further includes a method to parse the markup language to create a hierarchy of objects. Attributes that do not map directly to a class are defined with a definition tag. The definition tag is also used to add programming code to a page.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon a markup language data structure, comprising:

a first data field containing data mapped to a programming language class; and

a second data field containing data mapped to one of a property and an event in the class, wherein the mapping of the data in first data field to the programming language class and the mapping of the data in the second data field to the property and the event use one or more common language runtime object concepts and one or more extensible markup language files, the one or more common language runtime object concepts comprising a reflection, the reflection utilized to find at least one namespace via an extensible markup language namespace declaration, and wherein the one or more extensible markup language files are used to asynchronously create a plurality of items including at least one or more of the following;

user interfaces, vector graphic drawings, fixed-format documents, and adaptive-flow documents.

2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 further comprising a third field containing data indicating a uniform resource locator for retrieving a definition file having at least one assembly and at least one namespace for interpreting the first field and the second field.

3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein if the second data field has a * character, the second data field is set to a value equal to one of a newly instantiated object and an existing referenced object during process of the data structure.

4. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the second data field has stored thereon a compound property and wherein upon processing the second data field, a type converter is called if the second field is a text string.

5. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4 wherein upon processing the second data field, if the second field is an other tag, a class based on the other tag'"'"'s name is located, an object of the class based on the other tag'"'"'s name is instantiated, and the object is set as a value of a property on the tag.