Xml in Haskell

Here’s the translation of the XML example from Go to Haskell:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}

import Data.Text (Text)
import qualified Data.Text as T
import Text.XML
import Text.XML.Writer
import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy as BL

data Plant = Plant
  { plantId :: Int
  , plantName :: Text
  , plantOrigin :: [Text]
  } deriving (Show)

-- Plant will be mapped to XML. We use the Text.XML.Writer library
-- to define how our Plant type should be serialized to XML.
instance ToXML Plant where
  toXML plant = elementA "plant" [("id", T.pack $ show $ plantId plant)] $ do
    element "name" $ content $ plantName plant
    mapM_ (element "origin" . content) $ plantOrigin plant

-- Function to convert Plant to a string representation
plantToString :: Plant -> String
plantToString p = "Plant id=" ++ show (plantId p) ++ ", name=" ++ T.unpack (plantName p) ++ ", origin=" ++ show (plantOrigin p)

main :: IO ()
main = do
  let coffee = Plant 27 "Coffee" ["Ethiopia", "Brazil"]

  -- Emit XML representing our plant
  let xmlDoc = document (elementA "plant" [("id", "27")] $ do
        element "name" $ content "Coffee"
        element "origin" $ content "Ethiopia"
        element "origin" $ content "Brazil")
  
  let xmlString = BL.unpack $ renderLBS def xmlDoc
  putStrLn xmlString

  -- To add a generic XML header to the output, we prepend it
  putStrLn $ "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n" ++ xmlString

  -- Use parseText to parse a Text with XML into a Document.
  -- If the XML is malformed or cannot be mapped onto our structure,
  -- a descriptive error will be returned.
  case parseText def (T.pack xmlString) of
    Left err -> putStrLn $ "Failed to parse XML: " ++ show err
    Right _ -> putStrLn $ plantToString coffee

  let tomato = Plant 81 "Tomato" ["Mexico", "California"]

  -- In Haskell, we can represent nested XML structures using nested calls to 'element'
  let nestingDoc = document $ element "nesting" $ do
        element "parent" $ do
          element "child" $ do
            toXML coffee
            toXML tomato
  
  let nestingXml = BL.unpack $ renderLBS def nestingDoc
  putStrLn nestingXml

This Haskell code demonstrates XML handling using the xml-conduit and xml-conduit-writer libraries. Here’s a breakdown of the main points:

  1. We define a Plant data type to represent our data structure.

  2. We implement the ToXML typeclass for Plant to define how it should be serialized to XML.

  3. The main function demonstrates creating XML, parsing XML, and creating nested XML structures.

  4. Instead of using tags like in Go, we use the ToXML typeclass and the element and elementA functions to define the XML structure.

  5. For parsing XML, we use the parseText function, which returns either an error or a successfully parsed document.

  6. Nested XML structures are created by nesting calls to element.

Note that Haskell’s approach to XML handling is quite different from Go’s. Haskell uses a more declarative style, leveraging its type system and typeclasses to define how data should be serialized to and from XML.

To run this program, you would need to install the necessary libraries (text, xml-conduit, and xml-conduit-writer) using a package manager like Cabal or Stack, and then compile and run the program using GHC.