From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-09-27T09:03:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Embedded Ruby and Tag Libs

On Sep 26, 2005, at 6:47 PM, Adam Van Den Hoven wrote:

> The problem is that I LOVE XML, and find it easy to work with,  
> mostly because its easy to abstract complex things with it... which  
> is how I think.

Oh well.  I'm fine with it if with disagree on that.  I really am  
only trying to help, not rob you of your favorite tool, I promise.  ;)

> Without thinking of MUCH better ways to do this, I submit the  
> following:
>
> <av:form model="person">
>     <av:field name="name" />
>     <av:field name="password" />
>     <av:field name="single" />
>     <av:field name="description" />
> </av:form>

My offer to that would be similar to my last one, though I think this  
one is much easier:

<%= person %w{name password single description} %>

We don't have to do things the Rails' way.  ;)  I don't know about  
you, but I know which one of those I would rather be typing a lot of.

I'll stop trying to convince you now though and see if I can't  
provide some information you would consider useful...

> I'm assuming that whatever parser converts <%= ... %>  in to ruby  
> code can just as easily be setup to do the same thing with tags

No, I don't think ERb is going to meet your needs here.

> , maybe using REXML (or what ever its called). It just needs to be  
> more precise.

I really believe REXML is what you are looking for.  Everything you  
have asked for is pretty easy with it.  It will let you do all these  
transformations with a combination of XPath and Ruby which I assume  
you will find quite comfortable.  You can learn more from the  
documentation:

http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml/docs/tutorial.html

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II