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October 6, 2009

Groovy Goodness: Creating XML with MarkupBuilder

Groovy has some nice builder classes to create XML. We look at the MarkupBuilder and StreamingMarkupBuilder class in this post. Both allow us to define the XML structure with builder syntax. The MarkupBuilder is good for simple XML, but if we want to add for example namespaces we can use the StreamingMarkupBuilder.

import groovy.xml.*

def writer = new StringWriter()
def html = new MarkupBuilder(writer)
html.html {
    head {
        title 'Simple document'
    }
    body(id: 'main') {
        h1 'Building HTML the Groovy Way'
        p {
           mkp.yield 'Mixing text with '
           strong 'bold'
           mkp.yield ' elements.'
        }
        a href: 'more.html', 'Read more...'
    }
}
println writer

/*
Output:
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Simple document</title>
  </head>
  <body id='main'>
    <h1>Building HTML the Groovy Way</h1>
    <p>Mixing text with
      <b>bold</b> elements.
    </p>
    <a href="more.html">Read more..</a>
  </body>
</html>
*/

def builder = new StreamingMarkupBuilder()
builder.encoding = 'UTF-8'
def books = builder.bind {
    mkp.xmlDeclaration()
    namespaces << [meta:'http://meta/book/info']  // Or mkp.declareNamespace('meta':'http://meta/book/info')
    books(count: 3) {
        book(id: 1) {
            title lang:'en', 'Groovy in Action'
            meta.isbn '1-932394-84-2'
        }
        book(id: 2) {
            title lang:'en', 'Groovy Programming' 
            meta.isbn '0123725070'
        }
        book(id: 3) {
            title 'Groovy & Grails'  // & is converted to &amp;
            comment << 'Not yet available.'  // Or mkp.comment('Not yet available')            
        }
        book(id: 4) {
            mkp.yieldUnescaped '<title>Griffon Guide</title>'
        }
    }
}

println XmlUtil.serialize(books)

/* 
Output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<books xmlns:meta="http://meta/book/info" count="3">
  <book id="1">
    <title lang="en">Groovy in Action</title>
    <meta:isbn>1-932394-84-2</meta:isbn>
  </book>
  <book id="2">
    <title lang="en">Groovy Programming</title>
    <meta:isbn>0123725070</meta:isbn>
  </book>
  <book id="3">
    <title>Groovy &amp; Grails</title>
    <!--Not yet available.-->
  </book>
  <book id="4">
    <title>Griffon Guide</title>
  </book>
</books>
*/