Trivial XML

Simple parsing and building of XML documents, powered by new features only available in ES6.

The goals of this project:

To make XML parsing require little-to-no error checking. Exploring the node tree should be as forgiving as possible.
To provide an easy way to open, modify and save an XML document in a single, unified library.
To be easily installed without any native code compilation.
To provide a novel and terse API by taking advantage of the latest ES6 metaprogramming features.
Useful for quick and dirty jobs which don't need fine grained control over every intricacy of XML.
Prioritising ease-of-use over speed.
To make you re-think your approach to XML parsing.

Requires a recent version of Node which has Proxy support.

Examples

Parsing an XML document

var trixml = require('trixml');
var xml = trixml.parseSync(`
    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <Root an="attribute" another="one">
        <Envelope>
            <Message id="msg1">Hello</Message>
            <Message id="msg2">World</Message>
            <Message id="msg3">!</Message>
        </Envelope>
    </Root>
`);

xml.attr() // {an: "attribute", another: "one"}
xml.name; // "Root"
xml.value; // ""
xml.Envelope.Message.value; // "Hello"
xml.Envelope.Message.map(msg => msg.value).join(' ') // "Hello World !"
xml.Envelope.Message.attr('id') // msg1
xml.Envelope.Message.map(msg => msg.attr('id')).join(',') // "msg1,msg2,msg3"

Building an XML document

var trixml = require('trixml');
var xml = trixml.newDoc('root');

xml.Header("Hello ...");
xml.Body.Message("World", {length: 5});
xml.Body.Message("World!", {length: 6, planet: "Earth"}); // overwrites value & merges attributes
xml.Footer.wibble({a: "b", c: "d"});
xml.Footer.wobble("Easy!");
xml.Footer.addChild("wubble", {e: "f"}, "Simple!");
xml.Footer.addChild("wubble");
xml.Footer.flub("fluub");
xml.Trailer;

console.log(xml.toXML());

// <?xml version="1.0"?>
// <root>
//     <Header>Hello ...</Header>
//     <Body>
//         <Message length="6" planet="Earth">World!</Message>
//     </Body>
//     <Footer>
//         <wibble a="b" c="d" />
//         <wobble>Easy!</wobble>
//         <wubble e="f">Simple</wubble>
//         <wubble />
//         <flub>fluub</flub>
//     </Footer>
//     <Trailer />
// </root>

A basic RSS parser

var trixml = require('trixml');
var https = require('https');

function getRSSXML(callback) {
    var xmlString = "";
    https.request({
        hostname: 'github.com',
        path: '/mikuso.atom'
    }, res => {
        res.on('data', (d) => {
            xmlString += d;
        });
        res.once('end', () => callback(xmlString));
    }).end();
}

getRSSXML((xmlString) => {
    var doc = trixml.parseSync(xmlString);

    var items = doc.entry.map(e => `${e.published}: ${e.title}`).join("\n");

    console.log(`Title: ${doc.title}\nUpdated: ${doc.updated}\n------\n${items}`);

    // Title: mikuso’s Activity
    // Updated: 2016-07-22T17:21:22Z
    // ------
    // 2016-07-22T17:21:22Z: mikuso pushed to master at mikuso/trixml
    // 2016-07-22T17:19:48Z: mikuso pushed to master at mikuso/trixml
    // 2016-07-22T17:18:00Z: mikuso pushed to master at mikuso/trixml
    // 2016-07-22T17:18:00Z: mikuso created tag v0.0.3 at mikuso/trixml
    // ...
});

Gotchas

It's possible for nodes in your XML document to have names which conflict with the names of members of the XMLNode or XMLNodeCollection objects. When this happens, you cannot use the shorthand method for accessing child nodes.

The following XML nodes are affected: <inspect>, <toJSON>, <toString>, <value>, <children>, <comments>, <attr>, <addChild>, <get>, <cloneSync>, <remove>, <empty>

In these cases, you must use the longhand method like this:

var root = trixml.parseSync(`
    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <root>
        <inspect>
            <addChild>gotcha</addChild>
        </inspect>
    </root>
`);

root.get('inspect').get('addChild').value === "gotcha"; // true

// don't do this... (it won't work)
root.inspect.addChild.value; // TypeError: Cannot read property 'addChild' of null

Todo:

Add support for streams
Async parsing, returning Promises
Ability to remove attributes
Add support for more Array methods on XMLNodeCollection
More tests