This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by rwdaigle. Original Post: What's New in Edge Rails: A More Flexible to_xml Feed Title: Ryan's Scraps Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RyansScraps Feed Description: Ryan Daigle's various technically inclined rants along w/ the "What's new in Edge Rails" series. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by rwdaigle Latest Posts From Ryan's Scraps

The to_xml method on your ActiveRecord classes has a bunch ���o options that let you refine how you want your models to be serialized to xml. You���ve got your :only and :except options which let you filter in/out certain attributes:

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user = User.find(1)

user.to_xml(:except => [:id, :created_at])
#=>
# <user>
#   <name>Ryan</name>
#   <email>ryan@spamme.com</email>
# </user>

user.to_xml(:only => [:email])
#=>
# <user>
#   <email>ryan@spamme.com</email>
# </user>

(Want to have the result of methods serialized along side member attributes? Take a look at the :methods option).

You can also include first-level associations with :include:

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user.to_xml(:except => [:id, :created_at], :include => :posts)
#=>
# <user>
#   <name>Ryan</name>
#   <email>ryan@spamme.com</email>
#   <posts>
#     <post><title>What's New in Edge Rails</title></post>
#   </posts>
# </user>

You can also manipulate the XML builder directly as to_xml now yields the builder, allowing you to add arbitrary elements to the resulting serialized XML representation:

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user.to_xml(:except => [:id, :created_at]) do |xml|
  xml.serialize_version 1.1
end
#=>
# <user>
#   <name>Ryan</name>
#   <email>ryan@spamme.com</email>
#   <serialize_version>1.1</serialize_version>
# </user>

Note that the xml builder received in the block already contains the standard constructed XML representation ��� but you can now add to that with custom elements and other constructs. Just another easy way to massage the serialization to suit your needs.

tags: ruby, rubyonrails