Comments on: Generating custom XML for your rails app

By: Paul Hailes

Paul Hailes — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:40:05 +0000

I can’t believe how easy it just was to re-create a 2 page long php script which generated a xml file with a tiny bit of rails code.. and it’s a lot cleaner and easier to read! Thanks for posting your feedback.
One thing that might help others is you can use standard # comments next to the code to put a example next of the output. (thought that’s probably obvious to someone with more rails experience than me!)

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:05:21 +0000

You saved me a lot of time, thank you!

By: Jim Carrig

Jim Carrig — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:44:54 +0000

Another way is to override the default ActiveRecord to_xml method in post.rb. This lets you easily use the same builder code in different contexts — most importantly for singular and plural outputs.

For example, this takes care of both the posts.xml and posts/20.xml requests where the plural form uses

format.xml { render ml => @posts }
and the singular uses
format.xml { render ml => @post }

def to_xml(options={})
if options[:builder]
build_xml(options[:builder])
else
xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new
xml.instruct!
build_xml(xml)
end
end
private
def build_xml(xml)
xml.tag!(“created-at”, created_at, :type => :datetime)
xml.tag!(“updated-at”, updated_at, :type => :datetime)
xml.title post.title
xml.body post.body
xml.published_at post.published_at
xml.comments do
post.comments.each do |comment|
xml.comment do
xml.body comment.body
end
end
end
end

By: rails models are views? | the evolving ultrasaurus

rails models are views? | the evolving ultrasaurus — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:07:17 +0000

[...] xml, this strange controller pattern is easily corrected by providing an xml view. The xml builder syntax is particularly readable, and it is easy to design your XML API [...]

By: Creating custom XML in Ruby on Rails : compiled thoughts

Creating custom XML in Ruby on Rails : compiled thoughts — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:09:01 +0000

[...] a custom XML file for your model. I had a little trouble finding out how to do this on the web; this site and this one helped a little but could have been more specific. I’m going to go through this [...]

By: Sarah Allen

Sarah Allen — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:06:00 +0000

just curious… when was this XML builder syntax introduced into rails?

By: Sarah Allen

Sarah Allen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:14:24 +0000

Awesome. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!