The Rails™ 3 Way, Second Edition

Chapter 15. XML and Active Resource

Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook people if they try to walk around on their own. I really wonder why XML does not.

—Erik Naggum

XML doesn’t get much respect from the Rails community. It’s enterprisey. In the Ruby world that other markup language YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) and data interchange format JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) get a heck of a lot more attention. However, use of XML is a fact of life for many projects, especially when it comes to interoperability with legacy systems. Luckily, Ruby on Rails gives us some pretty good functionality related to XML.

This chapter examines how to both generate and parse XML in your Rails applications, starting with a thorough ...