README.md

XML Builder
=======

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## Overview

An Elixir library for building xml.

Each xml node is structured as a tuple of name, attributes map and content/list:

```elixir
{name, attrs, content | list}
```

## Installation

Add dependency to your project's `mix.exs`

```elixir
def deps do
  [{:xml_builder, "~> 2.1.1"}]
end
```

## Examples

### A simple element

Like `<person id="12345">Josh</person>`, would look like:

```elixir
{:person, %{id: 12345}, "Josh"} |> XmlBuilder.generate
```

### An element with child elements

Like `<person id="12345"><first>Josh</first><last>Nussbaum</last></person>`

```elixir
{:person, %{id: 12345}, [{:first, nil, "Josh"}, {:last, nil, "Nussbaum"}]} |> XmlBuilder.generate
```

### Convenience Functions

For more readability, you can use XmlBuilder's methods instead of creating tuples manually.

```elixir
XmlBuilder.document(:person, "Josh") |> XmlBuilder.generate
```

Outputs

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<person>Josh</person>
```

#### Building up an element

An element can be built using multiple calls to the `element` function

```elixir
import XmlBuilder

def person(id, first, last) do
  element(:person, %{id: id}, [
    element(:first, first),
    element(:last, last)
  ])
end

iex> [person(123, "Steve", "Jobs"),
      person(456, "Steve", "Wozniak")] |> generate
```

Outputs

```xml
<person id="123">
  <first>Steve</first>
  <last>Jobs</last>
</person>"
<person id="456">
  <first>Steve</first>
  <last>Wozniak</last>
</person>
```

#### Using keyed lists

The previous example can be simplified using a keyed list

```elixir
import XmlBuilder

def person(id, first, last) do
  element(:person, %{id: id}, first: first,
                              last: last)
end

iex> person(123, "Josh", "Nussbaum") |> generate(format: :none)
"<person id=\"123\"><first>Josh</first><last>Nussbaum</last></person>"
```

### DOCTYPE declarations

A DOCTYPE can be declared by applying the `doctype` function at the first position of a list of elements in a `document` definition:

```elixir
import XmlBuilder

document([
  doctype("html", public: ["-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN",
                "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"]),
  element(:html, "Hello, world!")
]) |> generate
```

Outputs

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>Hello, world!</html>
```

### Encoding

While the output is always UTF-8 and has to be converted in another place, you can override the encoding statement in the xml declaration
with the `encoding` option:

```elixir
import XmlBuilder

[XmlBuilder.element(:oldschool, [])]
|> XmlBuilder.document()
|> XmlBuilder.generate(encoding: "ISO-8859-1")
|> :unicode.characters_to_binary(:unicode, :latin1)
```

Outputs

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<oldschool/>
```

### Formatting

To remove indentation, pass `format: :none` option to `XmlBuilder.generate/2`:

```elixir
doc |> XmlBuilder.generate(format: :none)
```

The default is to formatting with indentation, which is equivalent to `XmlBuilder.generate(doc, format: :indent)`

## License

MIT