From: Massimiliano Mirra <list@...>
Date: 2002-03-18T07:03:35+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Xml Serialization for Ruby

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 05:20:56AM +0900, Chris Morris wrote:
> Xml Serialization allows classes to be marshalled to and from XML, with an
> emphasis on concise, human readable and editable XML.

<yum> :-)

> yields either:
> 
>   <MyClass>
>     <attr>
>       <String>new value</String>
>     </attr>
>   </MyClass>
> 
> or:
> 
>   <MyClass>
>     <attr>new value</attr>
>   </MyClass>

Might I suggest a slightly different output?

Some time ago I wanted to extend the tuple space that comes with Ruby,
so that it was accessible to other languages over the net and allowed
distributed objects and RPC.  The first step was marshalling objects
in XML, so I took XMarshal and modified it.  This was the output I
chose:

<MyClass>
  <String name="customer">John</String>
  <Integer name="id">12345</Integer>
</MyClass>

This way, every XML element stays consistent with the <Class></Class>
pattern.

Consider:

<MyClass>
  <SubClass name="sub">
    <String name="sub_attr">blah</String>
  </SubClass>
  <Integer name="an_int">12345</Integer>
</MyClass>

opposed to:

</MyClass>
  <sub>
    <SubClass>
      <sub_attr>
        <String>blah</String>
      </sub_attr>
    </SubClass>
  </sub>
  <an_int>
    <Integer>12345</Integer>
  </an_int>
</MyClass>


My .02 Euros. :-)

Massimiliano