ROXML Ruby Object to XML mapping library. For more information visit roxml.rubyforge.org
Quick Start Guide
This is a short usage example. See ROXML::ClassMethods::Declarations and packaged test cases for more information.
Basic Mapping
Consider an XML document representing a Library containing a number of Books. You can map this structure to Ruby classes that provide addition useful behavior. With ROXML, you can annotate the Ruby classes as follows:
class Book
include ROXML
xml_reader :isbn, :attr => "ISBN" # attribute with name 'ISBN'
xml_reader :title
xml_reader :description, :as => :cdata # text node with cdata protection
xml_reader :author
end
class Library
include ROXML
xml_accessor :name, :from => "NAME", :as => :cdata
xml_accessor :books, [Book], :in => "books"
end
To create a library and put a number of books in it we could run the following code:
book = Book.new()
book.isbn = "0201710897"
book.title = "The PickAxe"
book.description = "Best Ruby book out there!"
book. = "David Thomas, Andrew Hunt, Dave Thomas"
lib = Library.new()
lib.name = "Favorite Books"
lib << book
To save this information to an XML file:
File.open("library.xml", "w") do |f|
lib.to_xml.write(f, 0)
end
To later populate the library object from the XML file:
lib = Library.from_xml(File.read("library.xml"))
Similarly, to do a one-to-one mapping between XML objects, such as book and publisher, you would add a reference to another ROXML class. For example:
<book isbn="0974514055">
<title>Programming Ruby - 2nd Edition</title>
<description>Second edition of the great book.</description>
<publisher>
<name>Pragmatic Bookshelf</name>
</publisher>
</book>
can be mapped using the following code:
class BookWithPublisher
include ROXML
xml_name :book
xml_reader :publisher, Publisher
end
Note: In the above example, xml_name annotation tells ROXML to set the element name to “book” for mapping to XML. The default is XML element name is the class name in lowercase; “bookwithpublisher” in this case.
Manipulation
Extending the above examples, say you want to parse a book’s page count and have it available as an Integer. In such a case, you can extend any object with a block to manipulate it’s value at parse time. For example:
class Child
include ROXML
xml_reader :age, :attr do |val|
Integer(val)
end
end
The result of the block above is stored, rather than the actual value parsed from the document.
Construction
Complicated initialization may require action on multiple attributes of an object. As such, you can define method xml_initialize to perform initialization after instantiation and parsing, including causing your ROXML object to call its own constructor, as in the following:
class Measurement
include ROXML
xml_reader :units, :attr
xml_reader :value, :content
def xml_initialize
# xml attributes of self are already valid
initialize(value, units)
end
def initialize(value, units)
# translate units & value into metric, for example
end
end
One important use of this approach is to make ROXML object which may or may not include an xml backing, which may be used via new construction as well as from_xml construction.
Selecting a parser
By default, ROXML will use LibXML if it is available, or otherwise REXML. If you’d like to explicitly require one or the other, you may do the following:
module ROXML
XML_PARSER = 'libxml' # or 'rexml'
end
require 'roxml'
For more information on available annotations, see ROXML::ClassMethods::Declarations