/ 
xml-binddata-0.0.1
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/ XML::BindData

NAME

XML::BindData - Bind data structures into XML

SYNOPSIS

XML (indentation added for clarity)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<request>
    <type>add</type>
    <obj>
        <title tmpl-bind="module.title"/>
        <description tmpl-bind="module.description"/>
        <no-show tmpl-if="foo"/>
        <multiple-elems>
            <item tmpl-each="items">
                <id tmpl-bind="id"/>
                <name tmpl-bind="name"/>
            </item>
        </multiple-elems>
        <keywords>
            <keyword tmpl-each="keywords" tmpl-bind="this"/>
        </keywords>
        <here>
            <is-a>
                <nested tmpl-each="nested">
                    <thing tmpl-each="this" tmpl-attr-map="value:this"/>
                </nested>
            </is-a>
        </here>
    </obj>
</request>

Perl

my $data = {
    module => {
        title => 'XML::BindData',
        description => <<'EOF',
Yet another way to generate XML for you.
EOF
    },
    items => [
        { id => 1, name => 'perl' },
        { id => 2, name => 'xml' },
    ],
    keywords => [ qw/ perl xml / ],
    nested => [
        [ qw/1 2 3/ ],
        [ qw/4 5 6/ ],
    ],
};

print XML::BindData->bind($source_xml, $data);

Output (identation added for clarity)

<request>
  <type>add</type>
  <obj>
    <title>XML::BindData</title>
    <description>Yet another way to generate XML for you.
</description>
    <multiple-elems>
      <item>
        <id>1</id>
        <name>perl</name>
      </item>
      <item>
        <id>2</id>
        <name>xml</name>
      </item>
    </multiple-elems>
    <keywords>
      <keyword>perl</keyword>
      <keyword>xml</keyword>
    </keywords>
    <here>
      <is-a>
        <nested>
          <thing value="1"></thing>
          <thing value="2"></thing>
          <thing value="3"></thing>
        </nested>
        <nested>
          <thing value="4"></thing>
          <thing value="5"></thing>
          <thing value="6"></thing>
        </nested>
      </is-a>
    </here>
  </obj>
</request>

DESCRIPTION

This module provides yet another mechanism through which XML files can be created from Perl. It does this by reading in a valid XML template, and binding data directly into the DOM; creating/removing nodes as needs be.

This has the following benefits:

1. The template 'looks like' the XML to be generated.
2. The template is itself valid XML and can be edited as such.
3. The scope of intentionally limited to simple bindings (as opposed to XSLT which can be arbitrarily complex).
4. It should be possible to use existing, complex, internal data structures for the binding.

The module is probably not appropriate if you are already happily using XSLT, Template::Toolkit, etc. for XML generation.

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

XML::BindData->bind($xml_string, \%data)

This forms the entire public API to the module. It will parse the XML and traverse the resulting tree, binding the information in data.

DIRECTIVES

These directives may be assigned to nodes in the tree:

tmpl-bind="option.name"

Adds text content to the node. If an option is dot.separated, this will split on the dot and descend into nested hashes.

tmpl-each="option"

For the array ref found at 'option', duplicate this node, setting the current context to each item. An option name of 'this' refers to the current item, so a common idiom is:

<foo tmpl-each="nums" tmpl-bind="this"/>

...for the data...

{ nums => [ 1, 2, 3 ] }

...this would return...

<foo>1</foo><foo>2</foo><foo>3</foo>
tmpl-if="bool"

Only show the node if bool is true-ish. Can be negated as tmpl-if="!bool".

tmpl-attr-map="attr-name-one:opt1,attr-name-two:opt2"

Bind the value of 'opt1' into the attribute 'attr-name-one'. Multiple attributes can be assigned at a time, separated by commas.