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"
                     tmpl-default="A Perl module"/>
        <version tmpl-bind="module.version"
                 tmpl-default="0.0.1"/>
        <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 (indentation added for clarity)

<request>
  <type>add</type>
  <obj>
    <title>XML::BindData</title>
    <description>Yet another way to generate XML for you.</description>
    <version>0.0.1</version>
    <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

N.B. This module should be considered BETA quality. Bugs are expected.

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 is intentionally limited to simple bindings (as opposed to XSLT which can be arbitrarily complex).

4. It is intended to 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-default="value"

To be used with tmpl-bind. Adds a default text content value to the node if the value specified by tmpl-bind is undefined.

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. Comma and colon characters in a default value must be preceded with a single backslash.

tmpl-attr-defaults="attr-name-one:default1,attr-name-two:default2"

Bind the value of 'default1' into the attribute 'attr-name-one' if no other defined value is supplied. Multiple attributes can be assigned at a time, separated by commas.

CONTRIBUTORS

Gareth Harper - GHARPER

Chris Pereira

Michael Jemmeson - MJEMMESON