R: Methods for displaying XML objects

print.XMLAttributeDef {XML} | R Documentation

## Methods for displaying XML objects

### Description

These different methods attempt to provide a convenient way to display R objects representing XML elements when they are printed in the usual manner on the console, files, etc. via the `print` function. Each typically outputs its contents in the way that they would appear in an XML document.

### Usage

    ## S3 method for class 'XMLNode'
    print(x, ..., indent= "", tagSeparator = "\n")
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLComment'
    print(x, ..., indent = "", tagSeparator = "\n")
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLTextNode'
    print(x, ..., indent = "", tagSeparator = "\n")
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLCDataNode'
    print(x, ..., indent="", tagSeparator = "\n")
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLProcessingInstruction'
    print(x, ..., indent="", tagSeparator = "\n")
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLAttributeDef'
    print(x, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLElementContent'
    print(x, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLElementDef'
    print(x, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLEntity'
    print(x, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLEntityRef'
    print(x, ..., indent= "", tagSeparator = "\n")
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLOrContent'
    print(x, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'XMLSequenceContent'
    print(x, ...)

### Arguments

`x` | the XML object to be displayed
`...` | additional arguments for controlling the output from print. Currently unused.
`indent` | a prefix that is emitted before the node to indent it relative to its parent and child nodes. This is appended with a space at each succesive level of the tree. If no indentation is desired (e.g. when `xmlTreeParse` is called with `trim` and `ignoreBlanks` being `FALSE`) and `TRUE` respectively, one can pass the value `FALSE` for this `indent` argument.
`tagSeparator` | when printing nodes, successive nodes and children are by default displayed on new lines for easier reading. One can specify a string for this argument to control how the elements are separated in the output. The primary purpose of this argument is to allow no space between the elements, i.e. a value of `""`.

### Value

Currently, `NULL`.

### Note

We could make the node classes self describing with information about whether `ignoreBlanks` was `TRUE` or `FALSE` and if trim was TRUE or FALSE. This could then be used to determine the appropriate values for `indent` and `tagSeparator`. Adding an S3 class element would allow this to be done without the addition of an excessive number of classes.

### Author(s)

Duncan Temple Lang

### References

http://www.w3.org, http://www.omegahat.net/RSXML

### See Also

`xmlTreeParse`

### Examples

      fileName <- system.file("exampleData", "event.xml", package ="XML")

         # Example of how to get faithful copy of the XML.
      doc = xmlRoot(xmlTreeParse(fileName, trim = FALSE, ignoreBlanks = FALSE))
      print(doc, indent = FALSE, tagSeparator = "")

         # And now the default mechanism
      doc = xmlRoot(xmlTreeParse(fileName))
      print(doc)

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