I have recently been playing around with XML schemas and creating class models from them using xsd.exe (see MSDN).

I ran into a stumbling block, however, when I tried to use it to generate classes from a schema that used the <xsd:import> statement to import another schema. Although it is not very obvious from the documentation, it does support this, however it does not support the schemaLocation hint.

In order to use schemas that import or include other schemas you need to specify both the base schema and the imported schema on the command line.

For example if you have the following two schemas:

Schema1

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<xs:schema targetNamespace="http://example.com/XMLSchema1.xsd"
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns:examp1="http://example.com/XMLSchema1.xsd"
    xmlns:examp2="http://example.com/XMLSchema2.xsd">

    <xs:import namespace="http://example.com/XMLSchema2.xsd" schemaLocation="XMLSchema2.xsd" />

   <xs:element name="example">
        <xs:complexType>
            <xs:sequence>
                <xs:element name="test" type="examp2:myType" />
            </xs:sequence>
        </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Schema2

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<xs:schema targetNamespace="http://example.com/XMLSchema2.xsd"
    xmlns:examp2="http://example.com/XMLSchema2.xsd"
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <xs:complexType name="myType">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="test" type="xs:string" />
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:schema>

You would need to use the following command line:

xsd.exe schema1.xsd schema2.xsd /c