Ruby on Rails: Using XML Builder Partials

Question

Partials in XML builder are proving to be non-trivial.

After some initial Google searching, I found the following to work, although it's not 100%

 xml.foo do
     xml.id(foo.id)
     xml.created_at(foo.created_at)
     xml.last_updated(foo.updated_at)
     foo.bars.each do |bar|
         xml << render(:partial => 'bar/_bar', :locals => { :bar => bar })
     end
 end

this will do the trick, except the XML output is not properly indented. the output looks something similar to:

<foo>
  <id>1</id>
  <created_at>sometime</created_at>
  <last_updated>sometime</last_updated>
<bar>
  ...
</bar>
<bar>
  ...
</bar>
</foo>

The <bar> element should align underneath the <last_updated> element, it is a child of <foo> like this:

<foo>
  <id>1</id>
  <created_at>sometime</created_at>
  <last_updated>sometime</last_updated>
  <bar>
    ...
  </bar>
  <bar>
    ...
  </bar>
</foo>

Works great if I copy the content from bar/_bar.xml.builder into the template, but then things just aren't DRY.

Answer 1

There is unfortunately not a straight-forward solution to this. When looking at the code that ActionPack will initialize the Builder object with then the indent size is hard-coded to 2 and the margin size is not set. Its a shame that there is no mechanism to override this at present.

The ideal solution here would be a fix to ActionPack to allow these options to be passed to the builder but this would require some time investment. I have 2 possible fixes for you. Both dirty you can take your pick which feels less dirty.

Modify the rendering of the partial to render to a string and then do some Regex on it. This would look like this

_bar.xml.builder

xml.bar do
  xml.id(bar.id)
  xml.name(bar.name)
   xml.created_at(bar.created_at)
   xml.last_updated(bar.updated_at)
end

foos/index.xml.builder

xml.foos do
  @foos.each do |foo|
    xml.foo do
      xml.id(foo.id)
      xml.name(foo.name)
      xml.created_at(foo.created_at)
      xml.last_updated(foo.updated_at)
      xml.bars do
        foo.bars.each do |bar|
          xml << render(:partial => 'bars/bar', 
                 :locals => { :bar => bar } ).gsub(/^/, '      ')
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Note the gsub at the end of render line. This produces the following results

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<foos>
  <foo>
    <id>1</id>
    <name>Foo 1</name>
    <created_at>2010-06-11 21:54:16 UTC</created_at>
    <last_updated>2010-06-11 21:54:16 UTC</last_updated>
    <bars>
      <bar>
        <id>1</id>
        <name>Foo 1 Bar 1</name>
        <created_at>2010-06-11 21:57:29 UTC</created_at>
        <last_updated>2010-06-11 21:57:29 UTC</last_updated>
      </bar>
    </bars>
  </foo>
</foos>

That is a little hacky and definitely quite dirty but has the advantage of being contained within your code. The next solution is to monkey-patch ActionPack to get the Builder instance to work the way we want

config/initializers/builder_mods.rb

module ActionView
  module TemplateHandlers
    class BuilderOptions
      cattr_accessor :margin, :indent
    end
  end
end

module ActionView
  module TemplateHandlers
    class Builder < TemplateHandler

      def compile(template)
        "_set_controller_content_type(Mime::XML);" +
          "xml = ::Builder::XmlMarkup.new(" +
          ":indent => #{ActionView::TemplateHandlers::BuilderOptions.indent}, " +
          ":margin => #{ActionView::TemplateHandlers::BuilderOptions.margin});" +
          "self.output_buffer = xml.target!;" +
          template.source +
          ";xml.target!;"
      end
    end
  end
end

ActionView::TemplateHandlers::BuilderOptions.margin = 0
ActionView::TemplateHandlers::BuilderOptions.indent = 2

This creates a new class at Rails initialisation called BuilderOptions whose sole purpose is to host 2 values for indent and margin (although we only really need the margin value). I did try adding these variable as class variables directly to the Builder template class but that object was frozen and I couldn't change the values.

Once that class is created we patch the compile method within the TemplateHandler to use these values.

The template then looks as follows :-

xml.foos do
  @foos.each do |foo|
    xml.foo do
      xml.id(foo.id)
      xml.name(foo.name)
      xml.created_at(foo.created_at)
      xml.last_updated(foo.updated_at)
      xml.bars do
        ActionView::TemplateHandlers::BuilderOptions.margin = 3    
        foo.bars.each do |bar|
          xml << render(:partial => 'bars/bar', :locals => { :bar => bar } )
        end
        ActionView::TemplateHandlers::BuilderOptions.margin = 0
      end
    end
  end
end

The basic idea is to set the margin value to the indentation level that we are at when rendering the partial. The XML generated is identical to that shown above.

Please do not copy/paste this code in without checking it against your Rails version to ensure that they are from the same codebase. (I think the above is 2.3.5)