Generating XML in Erlang Using xmerl

Here's a quick example of how to build XML documents in Erlang using xmerl. The basic idea is to first transform your data into xmerl's "simple" format of tagged tuples and then use xmerl:export_simple to generate the XML.

The xmerl module's simple format maps an XML node to a tuple like so:

{TAG_NAME, TUPLE_LIST_OF_ATTRIBUTES, CONTENT_LIST}
% also
{TAG_NAME, CONTENT_LIST}

where TAG_NAME is an atom, TUPLE_LIST_OF_ATTRIBUTES is what it sounds like, and CONTENT_LIST contains items that are either themselves nodes in xmerl format, bare tags (atoms), or stringish items consisting of strings, binaries, and deep lists of same.

To demonstrate how one might go about coding up a function to transform some data into XML, I'll use the XML format used by Solr for document indexing. Basically, the goal is to take a list of fields (name/value pairs) like this:

 [{"id", "9885A004"},
  {"name", "Canon PowerShot SD500"},
  {"category", "camera"},
  {"features", "3x optical zoom"},
  {"features", "aluminum case"},
  {"weight", "6.4"},
  {"price", "329.95"}
 ]

and transform them into XML like this:

Example from http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/1668
<add>
  <doc>
    <field name="id">9885A004</field>
    <field name="name">Canon PowerShot SD500</field>
    <field name="category">camera</field>
    <field name="features">3x optical zoom</field>
    <field name="features">aluminum case</field>
    <field name="weight">6.4</field>
    <field name="price">329.95</field>
  </doc>
</add>

First, a function to convert a tuple list to field nodes in xmerl format:

fields_to_xml_simple(Fields) ->
    [ {field, [{name, K}], [V]} || {K, V} <- Fields ].

Next a function to generate the XML wrapper nodes, again in xmerl format:

doc_xml_simple(Fields) ->
    {add, [{doc, fields_to_xml_simple(Fields)}]}.

Finally, a function to transform xmerl's format into XML:

-define(xml_prolog, "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>").

make_doc_xml(Fields) ->
    Xml = xmerl:export_simple([doc_xml_simple(Fields)], xmerl_xml,
                              [{prolog, ?xml_prolog}]),
    unicode:characters_to_binary(Xml).

And that's it.

archived on 2011-02-16 in erlang, xml

Generating XML in Erlang Using xmerl

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