simple-xml-builder

simple-xml-builder

A simple node package for building large xml files.

Installation

$ npm install simple-xml-builder

Usage

To import the package we can do the following

//CJS
const { XMLBuilder } = require("simple-xml-builder");

//ESM
import { XMLBuilder } from "simple-xml-builder";

Here we have a simple example

import { XMLBuilder } from "simple-xml-builder";

const xml = new XMLBuilder({ outputFile: "example1.xml", format: true });

xml.add({ tag: "cars" })
    .add({ tag: "ford" })
    .add({ tag: "seats" })
    .txt("4")
    .add({ tag: "horsepower" })
    .txt("349")
    .end(); // or .close().close()

And it's corresponding output file

<cars>
  <ford>
    <seats>
      4
    </seats>
    <horsepower>
      349
    </horsepower>
  </ford>
</cars>

A more complex example

import { XMLBuilder } from "simple-xml-builder";

const xml = new XMLBuilder({ outputFile: "example2.xml", format: true });
xml.add({ tag: "xml", attributes: [{ key: "version", value: "1.0" }, { key: "encoding", value: "UTF-8" }], processing: true })
    .setNamespace("fb")
    .add({ tag: "post", attributes: [{ key: "id", value: "1" }] })
    .setNamespace(null)
    .add({ tag: "user" })
    .txt("John Doe")
    .add({ tag: "content" })
    .txt("hello")
    .close()
    .setNamespace("ig")
    .add({ tag: "post" })
    .setNamespace(null)
    .add({ tag: "user" })
    .txt("John Smith")
    .add({ tag: "keywords" })
    .add({ tag: "Travel", selfClosing: true })
    .add({ tag: "Photography", selfClosing: true })
    .end();

Output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fb:post id="1">
  <user>
    John Doe
  </user>
  <content>
    hello
  </content>
</post>
<ig:post>
  <user>
    John Smith
  </user>
  <keywords>
    <Travel/>
    <Photography/>
  </keywords>
</post>

API

XMLBuilder(options)

The XMLBuilder class takes an options parameter with the following format

Field	Type	Required	Default
outputFile	string	true
nameSpace	string|undefined|null	false
buffSize	number	false	50000
format	boolean	false	false
delimiter	string	false

The outputFile is used to specify the path of the generated XML file. nameSpace is used to specify the initial namespace of the tags, it can be later modified ussing .setNamespace(nameSpace). The class is writing the file content synchronous using a buffer, for peformance reasons, buffSize is used to specify the size of the buffer (in lines). format is used to specify if we want our genereated xml to be formatted, keeping this off will give a smaller output file.

Attribute

Attribute for XML tags, they have the following format

Field	Type
key	string
value	string

.add(options)

The add function is used to add a new tag to the file, it receives one parameter with the following format. The value will be XML encoded.

Field	Type	Required	Default
tag	string	true
selfClosing	boolean	false	false
attributes	Attribute[]	false	[]
processing	boolean	false	false

The selfClosing parameters specifies if the tag should be self closing, e.g

<someTag/>

The attributes option takes an array of Attributes and adds them to the tag. processing is used to specify if the tag is a processing instruction, e.g

<? ... ?>

.txt(content: string)

The txt function is used to add text content inside a tag. After a call to this function, the current tag will be closed automatically

.close()

The close function is used to close the current opened tag.

.end()

The end function is used to close all current opened tags.

.log()

The log function can be used for debugging, it will console.log the current buffer, opened tags and indentation level