xmlrep

Purpose

Export structured data from Lua in xml-form

Xmlrep makes it easy to create 'domain-specific' utilities to establish default-attributes or parameterised node-structures in the Lua representation of a data structure.

A Lua file is typically easier to keep under version control than an application-specific xml-file, because applications usually include extraneous information (e.g. 'last-modified' timestamps).

Status

Works as intended

Missing features

• Creating attributes directly from generic Lua-tables (alphabetic order)
• Escaping Text properly
• xml entities
• xml namespace

Defects

• Indentation after textnodes that are terminated with a newline

How to use

local X=require "xmlrep"
local N,A,T=X.N,X.A,X.T  -- Abbreviate Node, Attribute, Textnode
                         -- (Attributes and Textnodes may not be necessary,
                         -- since they can be created implicitly.)

local Readme=N "Readme" {"version=0.1"} {
    N "Level1" {"index=0", "version=0.1"} {
        N "Level2" {} {
        },
        N "Level2" {} {
        }
    }
}

print(Readme) -- Print xml-representation

More complex examples

                                        outputs xml-text ..
lua examples/Readme.lua                 .. with roughly the same content as this Readme.
lua examples/Demoproject.lua            .. of a project file for Visual Studio (.vcxproj).
lua examples/Mindmap.lua                .. of a mindmap for Freeplane (https://github.com/freeplane/freeplane)
lua examples/qtui/coverdialog.lua       .. of a resource-file for a Qt-application
lua examples/qtui/findmpddialog.lua     .. of a resource-file for a Qt-application

How to build

There is no need to build xmlrep, since it can be used in source-form.

How to install

Copy xmlrep.lua to a directory on your Luapath. Consult LUA_PATH_5_4 or LUA_PATH environment variables or https://www.lua.org/manual/5.4/manual.html#pdf-package.path