vxml - v1.0.2

VXML

This package is the reference implementation of VXML (“Vanilla XML”), a datatype and document format representing a simplified subset of XML for document processing and markup-language transpilation.

From XML, VXML keeps only recursive nodes, attributes, and text nodes. Other XML features are not expressible in VXML.

VXML is intended to operate as an intermediate between different light-markup-style document formats. A parser can convert a source document into VXML, a pipeline can transform the AST, and an emitter can serialize the result to HTML, XML-like text, JSX, or any other target for which an emitter has been written. VXML’s simple shape forces simple encoding and decoding contracts.

VXML comes with its own indentation-based serialization format for human inspection and for persisting documents required by test suites.

The in-program VXML datatype also conveys blame from the source document or an intervening transformation pipeline. Each atomic unit such as a tag, an attribute, or a line of text carries a Blame. This provides a built-in traceability mechanism for document transpilation. Blames are not encoded in VXML’s default serialization but a specific emitter can choose to be blame-aware, e.g., to provide “click to jump back to source”-type functionality.

VXML is semantics-agnostic: tags and attributes are names, not behaviors.

Example

This code parses an XML file to VXML and serializes the result as pretty-printed HTML:

import gleam/result
import gleam/string
import simplifile
import vxml
import vxml/blame
import vxml/io_lines

pub fn xml_file_to_html(path: String) -> Result(String, #(blame.Blame, String)) {
  simplifile.read(path)
  |> result.map_error(fn(e) { #(blame.no_blame, string.inspect(e)) })
  |> result.try(vxml.parse_xml(_, path))
  |> result.map(vxml.vxml_to_html_output_lines(_, 0, 2))
  |> result.map(io_lines.output_lines_to_string)
}

Package Contents

This package includes:

Model

The supporting data-bearing types are:

The main type is:

pub type VXML {
  V(blame: Blame, tag: String, attrs: List(Attr), children: List(VXML))
  T(blame: Blame, lines: List(Line))
}

Here:

Blame aside, VXML is built on four data-bearing types: V, T, Line, and Attr.

Moreover, each V, T, Line, and Attr value carries one Blame, stored as its first field, for a simple one-blame-per-value mental model.

Serialized Format

VXML includes a compact text format used for round-tripping, tests, and debug output.

A caret-like marker opens a node, attributes appear underneath the tag, and empty carets mark text nodes:

<> Article
  id=intro
  <> Title
    <>
      'A dark and stormy night'
  <> Section
    <> SectionTitle
      <>
        'Darkness descends'
    <> Paragraphs
      <>
        'This is the third text node'
        'of the tree, but the first'
        'text node with >1 lines.'
      <>
        'For VXML, this is just a'
        'second text node. A "paragraph"'
        'is not one of VXML's abstractions.'

Each Line of text appears as a single-quoted string, while Blames do not appear in the serialization.

Rules:

  1. tag names must start with an ASCII letter or _, and may then contain ASCII letters, digits, _, or .
  2. attribute keys must be nonempty and directly followed by =; they may not contain the = char, or spaces
  3. attribute values are not quoted, must follow = directly, and may be arbitrary newline-free strings; the final attribute value is whitespace-trimmed by the parser, if any trailing whitespace is found
  4. text nodes serialize as anonymous <> containers with single-quoted lines; the text content of a line is the part between the first ' and the last ', so intermediate single quotes do not need to be escaped
  5. serialized VXML has no escape syntax; quotes, backslashes, and other characters are read literally inside text lines
  6. a serialized text line that does not start and end with a single quote is an error
  7. indentation is fixed at two spaces, matching Gleam indentation and allowing VXML to be included as block strings in Gleam source
  8. text nodes must have at least one line, though the line can be the empty string
  9. serialized VXML does not have comments

Rules 1, 2, 3, and 8 are normative to the VXML datatype itself, not only to its serialization. Other rules address serialization-specific concerns.

Some validity constraints are documented rather than enforced by opaque types. This keeps V, T, Line, and Attr easy to construct, inspect, and rewrite directly. Values that violate those constraints should still be treated as malformed; in particular, a T node with an empty line list is malformed.

Serialized VXML can be parsed and emitted directly:

let assert Ok([tree]) =
  vxml.parse_string(source, "example.vxml", True)

let text =
  vxml.vxml_to_string(tree)

Ingress: Parsing XML and HTML

The default XML-like parser takes a source string and a filename-like token to use for blame-generation:

let path = "content/source.xml"
let short_pathname_to_use_in_blame = "source.xml"

simplifile.read(path)
|> result.map_error(fn(e) { #(blame.no_blame, string.inspect(e)) })
|> result.try(vxml.parse_xml(_, short_pathname_to_use_in_blame))

For iffy input that may come from a handwritten HTML source, html_repair can repair a few common patterns before parsing:

let path = "content/source.html"
let short_pathname_to_use_in_blame = "source.html"

simplifile.read(path)
|> result.map_error(fn(e) { #(blame.no_blame, string.inspect(e)) })
|> result.map(vxml.html_repair)
|> result.try(vxml.parse_xml(_, short_pathname_to_use_in_blame))

The html_repair step:

The individual repair helpers are public so callers can apply only the repair steps they want. These helpers are deliberately narrow string repairs, not a general HTML parser.

XML comments are tokenized by the lower-level streamer, but parse_xml does not represent them in the returned VXML tree.

Before parsing, source strings are converted to List(InputLine). That conversion can be performed directly with io_lines.string_to_input_lines, and the result can be inspected with io_lines.input_lines_table. For even lower-level inspection one can use xml_streamer.input_lines_streamer, which turns those input lines into XML token events rather than VXML.

HTML and JSX Output

Use the HTML helpers when a VXML tree directly represents HTML elements. The output stays line-based until it is converted to a string or written to disk:

let lines = vxml.vxml_to_html_output_lines(tree, 0, 2)

The HTML serializer escapes non-entity ampersands in text. It treats common inline tags as sticky when laying out output, so inline content is not forced onto separate lines unless the tree requires it.

JSX-like output is available through:

let lines = vxml.vxml_to_jsx_output_lines(tree, 0, 2)
let source = vxml.vxml_to_jsx(tree, 0, 2)

Blame

Every node, attribute, and line carries a Blame value. Blame records where a piece of data came from, or which later transformation introduced it.

pub type Blame {
  Src(comments, path, line_no, char_no, cursor)
  Des(comments, name, line_no) // maintained desugarer code
  Ext(comments, name)          // external/manual code attribution
  NoBlame(comments)
}

SourceCursor controls whether source positions can move when text is sliced:

This is useful for parser and transformation pipelines that need diagnostics or source maps after several tree rewrites.

Des and Ext can be used for code-attributed blame, respectively from inside a transformation pipeline and from outside it, such as an emitter step.

Blame Tables

Use vxml_table to inspect serialized VXML together with its attached blames. For direct control over the emitted lines, use vxml_to_output_lines together with io_lines.output_lines_table_with. This allows the blame margin columns to be sized explicitly:

let assert Ok([tree]) =
  vxml.parse_string(source, "example.vxml", True)

tree
|> vxml.vxml_to_output_lines
|> io_lines.output_lines_table_with(
  "",
  0,
  blame.BlameTableMarginColumnsMinMax(30, 30),
  blame.BlameTableMarginColumnsMinMax(0, 0),
)
|> io.println

The first BlameTableMarginColumnsMinMax controls the blame digest columns. The second controls the blame comments columns. Passing (0, 0) for the comments columns suppresses them entirely. For the serialized VXML example above, this prints:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ Blame                       █doc
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ example.vxml:1:1 ->         █<> Article
│ example.vxml:2:3            █  id=intro
│ example.vxml:3:3 ->         █  <> Title
│ example.vxml:4:5            █    <>
│ example.vxml:5:7            █      'A dark and stormy night'
│ example.vxml:6:3 ->         █  <> Section
│ example.vxml:7:5 ->         █    <> SectionTitle
│ example.vxml:8:7            █      <>
│ example.vxml:9:9            █        'Darkness descends'
│ example.vxml:10:5 ->        █    <> Paragraphs
│ example.vxml:11:7           █      <>
│ example.vxml:12:9           █        'This is the third text node'
│ example.vxml:13:9           █        'of the tree, but the first'
│ example.vxml:14:9           █        'text node with >1 lines.'
│ example.vxml:15:7           █      <>
│ example.vxml:16:9           █        'For VXML, this is just a'
│ example.vxml:17:9           █        'second text node. A "paragraph"'
│ example.vxml:18:9           █        'is not one of VXML's abstractions.'
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Import Guide

Most users should start with vxml, vxml/blame, and vxml/io_lines. Use xml_streamer when token-level XML processing is needed.

Tests

Run the package tests from this directory:

gleam test
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