Getting started

Introduction

A ReqIF document is an XML document that is structured according to the OMG ReqIF specification and is used for the exchange of requirements that have been authored in different tools such as CDP4-COMET, IBM Rational DOORS and many others. The ReqIF specification includes the ReqIF XML schema. The ReqIF standard makes use of certain XHTML modules that provide formatting for text such as tabular data, bold, italics etc. The ReqIFSharp library can be used with and without XML Schema validation. ReqIFSharp targets netstandard 2.0.

The two interfaces that are used the most in the reqifsharp library are the IReqIFDeserializer interface and the IReqIFSerializer interface. The IReqIFDeserializer interface is used to deserialize a ReqIF document and create ReqIF objects, while the IReqIFSerializer is used to serialize ReqIF objects.

Deserialization

An existing ReqIF document can be deserialized to an object graph using the ReqIFDeserializer class that implements the IReqIFDeserializer interface. The IReqIFDeserializer interface exposes one method, the Deserialize method. The Deserialize method returns an IEnumerable{ReqIF}. A ReqIF object is the root node of a ReqIF document. The following code snippet demonstrates how to deserialize a ReqIF document without XML schema validation.

public void Deserialize()
{
    var path = "some-file-path.reqif";
    var deserializer = new ReqIFDeserializer();
    var reqif = deserializer.Deserialize(path).First();
    var header = reqif.TheHeader;
    var content = reqif.CoreContent;
}

The following code snippet demonstrates how to deserialize using XML schema validation.

public void Deserialize()
{
    var path = "some-file-path.reqif";
    var deserializer = new ReqIFDeserializer();
    var reqif = deserializer.Deserialize(path, true, this.ValidationEventHandler).First();
    var header = reqif.TheHeader;
    var content = reqif.CoreContent;
}

public void ValidationEventHandler(object sender, ValidationEventArgs validationEventArgs)
{
    throw validationEventArgs.Exception;
}

Serialization

The ReqIFSerializer class that implements the IReqIFSerializer interface is used to serialize a requirements specification to a reqif document. A ReqIF object, and its content, can be constructed using the ReqIFSharp library. The following snippet demonstrates how this can be achieved.

public void Serialize()
{
    var reqif = new ReqIF();
    reqIF.Lang = "en";

    var header = new ReqIFHeader()
    {
        Comment = "this is a comment",
        CreationTime = DateTime.Parse("2015-12-01"),
        Identifier = "reqifheader",
        RepositoryId = "a repos id",
        ReqIFToolId = "reqifsharp",
        ReqIFVersion = "1.0",
        SourceToolId = "reqifsharp",
        Title = "this is a title"
    };

    this.reqIF.TheHeader = header;

    var reqIfContent = new ReqIFContent();
    this.reqIF.CoreContent = reqIfContent;

    var reqifs = new List<ReqIF> { reqif };

    var resultFileUri = "some-file-path.reqif";
    var serializer = new ReqIFSerializer(false);
    serializer.Serialize(reqifs, resultFileUri, null);
}

For a more detailed explanation of the ReqIFContent of a ReqIF object please refer to the online documentation.