How to simply parse/serialize a Map to/from XML that has keys as tag names wrapping text values. about xmlutil HOT 5 OPEN

The challenge is that this is not quite valid Xml. Tag names are intended to be well-defined. I would consider custom parsing the best solution (if you do this in a custom serializer you can still parse the values using serialization). However, there are other options:

• Probably best: Using a custom serializer on the container parse the xml manually and then use serialization for the values.
• You could do do some rewriting as in https://github.com/pdvrieze/xmlutil/blob/master/examples/DYNAMIC_TAG_NAMES.md
• You could also use the fact that if you have a list of Node instances it will work (note that text element serialization is broken - also marking it as XmlValue breaks).
• Your handling of the content would work (have a look at the depth property to "deal" with nesting)

from xmlutil.

Thank you! I've actually already started implementing the dynamic tag names approach serializing a Map instead of a List. Serializing the Map without nesting worked straightaway, but I have not successfully parsed out values with MapEntrySerializer and DynamicTagReader.
But, I'm coming to the realization that this approach is probably more work that it is worth, being that it is a minor part of the overall data model (the XML is the metadata of one object type in a vast sea of JSON). Being that our structure is not quite valid XML, I'm thinking maybe I should just revert back to doing dumb string building and parsing and use expect/actuals for the parts that don't have pure kotlin solutions (StringEscapeUtils.escapeXml11 in Apache Commons Text, for example).

from xmlutil.

@gladapps You don't need to go to raw parsing with regexes or something. You can use the (separate) xml parsing support from the core library. You just create your parser, then read events, if it is a tag handle it (read the value (perhaps recursively), then add it to your list). It is serialization that doesn't like it (it makes too many assumptions), not the xml parser. However, parsing a list of Nodes "should" work (but it doesn't due to a bug).

from xmlutil.