Xml library with control over how empty tags are printed

I added this functionality to xml_builder_ex.

See empty: :full option in a call to generate/2.

Very cool ! The library looks neat. I’ll try it.

It works almost like expected. The only problem is that empty tags have indentation whitespaces as content. I think deleting lines 171 and 192 in file lib/xml_builder.ex would fix it.

Also, the readme defines the dependency as {:xml_builder, "~> 3.1"} but it only works if it is defined as {:xml_builder_ex, "~> 3.1"}.

It’s not a problem, it is how it worked by design. There is an ability to provide a format: option to generate/2 and all the formatters would use it. Just gluing empty tags would violate this, so you always had an option to do format: [*: :indent, tag1: :none, tag2: :none].

But since it’s a common expectation to have empty tags glued, I added empty: :squeezed alongside empty: :full which does not respect the format setting and glues empty tags in (example from tests.)

I’m not sure I understand. Doesn’t the indentation need to be preceded by a line break ? How does a parser know that b in this xml is empty and not equal to two blanks:

<a>
  <b>  </b>
</a>

Use empty: :squeezed if you need it to be <b></b>. I am to leave empty: :full for the cases when users want {:b, nil, nil} AST to be transformed into <b> </b>.