CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyxmlnokogiri
Nickolay Kondratenko
Nickolay Kondratenko

Reputation: 1951

Create non-self-closed empty tag with Nokogiri

When I try to create an XML document with Nokogiri::XML::Builder:

builder = Nokogiri::XML::Builder.new do |xml|
  xml.my_tag({key: :value})
end

I get the following XML tag:

<my_tag key="value"/>

It is self-closed, but I need the full form:

<my_tag key="value"></my_tag>

When I pass a value inside the node (or even a space):

xml.my_tag("content", key: :value)
xml.my_tag(" ", key: :value)

It generates the full tag:

<my_tag key="value">content</my_tag>
<my_tag key="value"> </my_tag>

But if I pass either an empty string or nil, or even an empty block:

xml.my_tag("", key: :value)

It generates a self-closed tag:

<my_tag key="value"/>

I believe there should be some attribute or something else that helps me but simple Googling didn't find the answer.

I found a possible solution in "Building blank XML tags with Nokogiri?" but it saves all tags as non-self-closed.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 2639

Answers (1)

Kristj&#225;n
Kristj&#225;n

Reputation: 18803

You can use Nokogiri's NO_EMPTY_TAGS save option. (XML calls self-closing tags empty-element tags.)

builder = Nokogiri::XML::Builder.new do |xml|
  xml.my_tag({key: :value})
end

puts builder.to_xml(save_with: Nokogiri::XML::Node::SaveOptions::NO_EMPTY_TAGS)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<my_tag key="value"></my_tag>

Each of the options is represented in a bit, so you can mix and match the ones you want. For example, setting NO_EMPTY_TAGS by itself will leave your XML on one line without spacing or indentation. If you still want it formatted for humans, you can bitwise or (|) it with the FORMAT option.

builder = Nokogiri::XML::Builder.new do |xml|
  xml.my_tag({key: :value}) do |my_tag|
    my_tag.nested({another: :value})
  end
end

puts builder.to_xml(
  save_with: Nokogiri::XML::Node::SaveOptions::NO_EMPTY_TAGS
)
puts
puts builder.to_xml(
  save_with: Nokogiri::XML::Node::SaveOptions::NO_EMPTY_TAGS |
             Nokogiri::XML::Node::SaveOptions::FORMAT
)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<my_tag key="value"><nested another="value"></nested></my_tag>

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<my_tag key="value">
  <nested another="value"></nested>
</my_tag>

There are also a handful of DEFAULT_* options at the end of the list that already combine options into common uses.

Your update mentions "it saves all tags as non-self-closed", as if perhaps you only want this single tag instance to be non-self-closed, and the rest to self close. Nokogiri won't produce an inconsistent document like that, but if you must, you can concatenate some XML strings together that you built with different options.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions