pretty_xml

This is pre-1.0 and probably unstable. Use at your own risk

I don't recommend using this unless you are sure a human will have to read your XML file.

Non-features:

  • pretty_xml does not support namespaced nodes yet.
  • deletes all linebreaks from input

Use

pretty_xml expects that three main parameters be passed:

  1. block: elements that should have internal and external linebreaks
  2. compact: elements that should have external linebreaks
  3. inline: elements that should have neither internal not external linebreaks

Additional parameters are:

  1. preserve_whitespace: retain standalone whitespace only text nodes within compact and inline elements
  2. tab: specifies the kind of space that should be used for indenting the output.

Less common parameters:

  1. close_tags: a list of tags that need explicit closing tags in the output (as in HTML5, <a id="something"></a> is correct, but a self-closing <a id="something"/> will not be parsed correctly in all cases)
  2. control_chars: options are :named or :hex for <, >, and & as literal characters in output; defaults to :named

Use these parameters within a hash to initialize an instance of the PrettyXML::PrettyPrint class. To prettyprint a document, pass a Nokogiri::XML::Document or a string as an argument to the pp method.

Example

doc = '<root>  <block>
 <p> 
</p>

    </block><p>stuff<i> </i></p>  

    <structure>
                       <div>
                       <p>yo yo<i/></p>
</div>
</structure></root>'

options = {
  :block => %w(root block structure div),
  :compact => %w(p),
  :inline => %w(i),
  :preserve_whitespace => true,
  :delete_all_linebreaks => true,
  :tab => '  '
}

puts PrettyXML::PrettyPrint.new(options).pp(doc)

returns

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <block>
    <p> </p>
  </block>
  <p>stuff<i> </i></p>
  <structure>
    <div>
      <p>yo yo<i/></p>
    </div>
  </structure>
</root>

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