XML::Writer

From David Megginson’s original introduction:

“XML::Writer is a simple Perl module for writing XML documents: it takes care of constructing markup and escaping data correctly, and by default, it also performs a significant amount of well-formedness checking on the output, to make certain (for example) that start and end tags match, that there is exactly one document element, and that there are not duplicate attribute names.”

The last official release, 0.4, has a few bugs, but is no longer actively maintained by David Megginson. This is a repository for the necessary minor fixes and an effort to assure the quality of this widely-used module through a comprehensive test suite.

Release 0.900, now available from CPAN, fixes many bugs and warnings, and adds several useful features.

License

Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty.

Links

• Developer pages - GitHub developer pages
• XML::Writer - current CPAN release
• Open CPAN bugs

Changes

If you want to check the precise changes, this colourised diff may be useful.

Revision history for Perl extension XML::Writer.

0.900 Fri Mar  8 00:19:28 2019 +1100    <xxx@xxx>
        - Drop support for building on (very) old perls.
        - Check for valid element names (#107239)
        - Fail when a scalar other than 'self' is passed as OUTPUT.

0.625 Thu Jun  5 23:55:42 2014 +1000    <xxx@xxx>
        - Allow xml-model processing instructions (#94078).
        - Don't warn when undef is passed to setOutput (#94369).

0.624 Wed Feb 12 23:28:39 2014 +1100    <xxx@xxx>
        - Allow an empty system ID in a doctype declaration.

0.623 Thu Jun 13 23:29:52 2013 +1000    <xxx@xxx>
        - Fix a memory leak introduced in 0.620.
        - Avoid issue with implicit stringification.

0.622 Tue May 28 23:02:56 2013 +1000    <xxx@xxx>
        - Fix bug where output is an IO::Scalar.

0.621 Sun Apr 14 22:42:38 2013 +1000    <xxx@xxx>
        - Include selfcontained_output.t in the distribution.

0.620 Sun Apr 14 22:20:33 2013 +1000    <xxx@xxx>
        - Allow OUTPUT => 'self' (#81327).

0.615 Tue Jan 17 01:32:07 2012 +1100    <xxx@xxx>
        - Fix test skipping when Unicode is unsupported.

0.614 Mon Jan  9 00:24:10 2012 +1100    <xxx@xxx>
        - Fix regression in 0.613 and set encoding on GLOBs.

0.613 Sat Jan  7 22:51:26 2012 +1100    <xxx@xxx>
        - Use 'Object->new()' syntax throughout (#65840).
        - Support passing in any arbitrary object that has a print()
           method (from Jason Rodrigues).

0.612 Mon Aug 16 00:10:16 2010 +1000    <xxx@xxx>
        - Allow DATA_INDENT to specify arbitrary white space for
           indentation. If it is numeric then use that many space
           characters.

0.611 Thu Apr 22 13:09:12 BST 2010    <xxx@xxx>
        - Adopt rewritten license text to explicitly allow modification.

0.610 Mon Mar 29 02:29:32 BST 2010    <xxx@xxx>
        - Add a CHECK_PRINT constructor parameter to check the output print
           success (#50465). It will croak when printing to output fails.

0.607 Mon Mar 22 14:46:26 GMT 2010    <xxx@xxx>
        - Address license confusion by reverting to the original
           license, with contributor permission, and removing
           unintentional references to the (more restrictive)
           GPL/Artistic.

0.606 Wed Dec  3 00:09:34 GMT 2008    <xxx@xxx>
        - Ensure META.yml spec version matches URL.

0.605 Mon Dec  1 23:01:21 GMT 2008    <xxx@xxx>
        - Use MIT license, formalising David Megginson's original
           ("No warranty. Commercial and non-commercial use freely
           permitted.").
        - Fix from Yanick Champoux for dataElements namespaces (#41359).

0.604 Thu Feb 21 00:42:06 GMT 2008    <xxx@xxx>
        - Patch from Andreas Koenig for lc(undef) warning in 5.11 (#32874).
        - Include example code.

0.603 Mon Jun 25 22:31:40 BST 2007    <xxx@xxx>
        - Escape all necessary white space in attributes (#25499).

0.602 Sat Nov 11 16:54:22 GMT 2006    <xxx@xxx>
        - Fix bugs in test case to avoid breaking with new Perls.
        - Make test case work with older Perls, tested against 5.004 (#17288).
        - Include pod syntax and coverage tests.

0.601 Fri Sep  1 15:01:45 BST 2006    <xxx@xxx>
        - Don't modify list references passed as tag or attribute names
           (cpan #14854).

0.600 Thu Jun 30 23:17:00 BST 2005    <xxx@xxx>
        - Don't include an encoding in the XML declaration unless one
           is specified.
        - Check for, and croak on, invalid characters (including ASCII NUL).
        - Fixed 'ancestor' with out-of-bounds indexes.

0.545 Mon May 16 08:11:17 BST 2005    <xxx@xxx>
        - Format comments like elements when in data mode.
        - Only attempt Unicode tests for Perl >= 5.8.1.

0.540 Tue May 10 18:18:58 BST 2005    <xxx@xxx>
        - Don't die when ENCODING is specified with a scalar OUTPUT.
        - Add support for US-ASCII encoding.

0.531 Mon Mar 14 22:11:33 GMT 2005    <xxx@xxx>
        - Rename internal String package to avoid clash with external modules.
        - Fix Unicode test skipping for Perls before 5.8.

0.530 Tue Feb  1 13:09:31 GMT 2005    <xxx@xxx>
        - Allow scalar references for the OUTPUT parameter, inspired by
           Simon Oliver's XML::Writer::String (patch from Yanick Champoux)
        - Added ENCODING parameter; currently only UTF-8 is supported
        - Escape newlines in attribute values

0.520 Wed Sep  1 16:18:46 BST 2004    <xxx@xxx>
        - Fixed bug with forced declaration of the default namespace (#7266)
        - Removed dead code. Added copyright notices to pod.
        - Improved test coverage

0.510 Tue May 25 19:46:04 BST 2004    <xxx@xxx>
        - Permitted in-document namespace prefix control
        - Don't reopen STDOUT for output (closes #6232)
        - Moved tests into t/. Added tests for mid-document namespace changes.
          Show diffs when comparison tests fail

0.500 Sat Mar  6 22:45:54 GMT 2004    <xxx@xxx>
        - Prepared metadata for a consistent, CPAN-friendly 0.500 release
        - Added a META.yml to prevent XML::Writer::Namespaces from
          being indexed
        - Writer.pm: Removed a duplicate check for valid attribute names
        - test.pl: Added more tests for full coverage of the cdata method

0.4.6 Tue Mar  2 16:54:04 GMT 2004    <xxx@xxx>
        - test.pl: Revert to using a temporary file, rather than an
          IO::String, for compatibility with older Perls

0.4.5 Mon Mar  1 14:46:47 GMT 2004    <xxx@xxx>
        - added FORCED_NS_DECLS parameter, to declare namespaces ahead of use
        - fixed check for duplicate attributes
        - correctly take the default namespace from the supplied prefix map
        - no longer produce namespace declarations for the 'xml:' prefix
        - allow xml-stylesheet PIs
        - fixed warnings about uninitialised values
        - added a comprehensive suite of tests, using Test::More

0.4.2 Sun Feb 22 15:33:44 GMT 2004    <xxx@xxx>
        - added raw() to print raw, unescaped text
        - patch from srinithan adding cdata() and cdataElement() to
          write CDATA sections

0.4.1 Sat Oct 18 19:51:51 BST 2003    <xxx@xxx>
        - fixed deprecation warning from 'use IO'

Last modified: 2019-03-08