XML Builder
=======
[](https://travis-ci.org/joshnuss/xml_builder)
## Overview
An Elixir library for building xml. It is inspired by the late [Jim Weirich](https://github.com/jimweirich)'s awesome [builder](https://github.com/jimweirich/builder) library for Ruby.
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
document(:oldschool)
|> generate(encoding: "ISO-8859-1")
|> :unicode.characters_to_binary(:unicode, :latin1)
```
Outputs
```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<oldschool/>
```
### Standalone
Should you need `standalone="yes"` in the xml declaration, you can pass `standalone: true` as option to the `generate/2` call:
```elixir
import XmlBuilder
document(:outsider)
|> generate(standalone: true)
```
Outputs
```xml
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<outsider/>
```
### 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
