What's the "state-of-the-art" way to generate a si...

# getting-started

[Vampire]

What's the "state-of-the-art" way to generate a simple XML file with Kotlin?
Is it to use KxS with https://github.com/pdvrieze/xmlutil, or is there something else, for example like the MarkupBuilder in Groovy?

Kotlin version is 1.7.10, as it is for a Gradle 7.6 supporting plugin.

[hfhbd]

I regularly use xmlutil but honestly it takes some time to understand its API.

[Vampire]

Trying it right now, just have to find which version still supports 1.7.10.
Latest is compiled with 1.9

[Vampire]

Do you know a way to make a list serialized with tags in a parent tag without specifying the child tag names?
I'd like to have the child tag name configured at the child type.
But the only way I found to make them rendered in a parent tag is XmlChildrenName which forces to give the child name.
Besides that it is a strange side-effect, that it causes a wrapping tag to be used.

[hfhbd]

Can you provide a sample of your xml you want to produce?

[Vampire]

<foo>
    <bar>
        <baz bam="bam1"/>
        <baz bam="bam2"/>
    </bar
</foo>

Foo has a list of Baz.
I specify @SerialName("baz") on Baz.
But I do not see how to make it wrapped in bar without using
@XmlChildrenName where I have to specify baz again.

[hfhbd]

Hm, I just used the lazy workaround and created another class Bar containing a list of Baz.

[Vampire]

Hm, yeah, that's one possibility, thanks, but such an unnecessary indirection 😄

[Vampire]

And how do I set an xml ns on the root node without any prefix?
Using the default value for the prefix results in an empty xmlns attribute and a prefix for the intended namespace. 😕

[Vampire]

Ah, just not using XmlSerialName but having a property called xmlns hackyyy

[Vampire]

Hm, no, that only works properly with encodeToString, but not with encodeToWriter. 😞

[Vampire]

Ah, there it works with using XmlSerialName 😒

[hfhbd]

Yes, you have to use XmlSerialName everywhere...

[Vampire]

No, just on the root element seems to be enough

[hfhbd]

It depends on your xml, if you want to use different namespaces, I tried a mix of SerialName and XmlSerialName and choose the latter, otherwise the namespaces were wrong. Anyway, we use it only for automatic soap api generating.