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• Core:
• Serialization:
• Serialutil:
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Introduction

• Gradle wrapper validation:

This project is a cross-platform XML serialization (wrapping) library compatible with kotlin serialization. It provides capabilities for Android, JVM and JS (alpha quality)

It also provides serialization support

Help wanted: Any help with extending this project is welcome. Help is especially needed for the following aspects:

• Documentation updates
• Testing, in particular more extensive tests. Some tests already exist for both JVM and Android
• Javascript support
  • Core Javascript support needs testing but should work. It is based on DOM so may be slow
  • Javascript serialization support: make serialization work on Javascript once possible
• Native support: Currently there is no implementation for Kotlin native.

Versioning scheme

This library is based upon the unstable kotlinx.serialization library. Until that library is stable, this library will use the kotlinx.serialization library version as a prefix and append a release number. While every effort is made to limit incompatible changes, this cannot be guaranteed even in "minor" versions when the changes are due to bugs. These changes should be limited mainly to the serialization part of the library.

How to use

The library is designed as a multiplatform kotlin module, but platform-specific versions can also be used were appropriate.

Add repository

Unfortunately, there is an issue with multiplatform-multisubproject setups for bintray. In the future a reorganization will be needed. For now add the repository to the build file:

repositories {
	maven {
		url  "https://dl.bintray.com/pdvrieze/maven"
	}
}

Core

multiplatform

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil:0.80.1")

JVM -- uses the stax API not available on Android

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-jvm:0.80.1")

Android -- Uses the android streaming library

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-android:0.80.1")

JS -- Wraps DOM

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-js:0.80.1")

Serialization

multiplatform

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-serialization:0.80.1")

JVM

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-serialization-jvm:0.80.1")

Android

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-serialization-android:0.80.1")

js

   implementation("net.devrieze:xmlutil-serialization-js:0.80.1")

Serialization help

Examples

You should be able to find examples in the Examples module

Format

The entrypoint to the library is the XML format. There is a default, but often a child is better. A custom format is created through:

val format = XML(mySerialModule) {  
    // configuration options
    autoPolymorphism = true 
}

The options available are:

The properties that have been moved into the policy can still be set in the builder but are no longer able to be read through the config object.

Algorithms

XML and Kotlin data types are not perfectly alligned. As such there are some algorithms that aim to automatically do the best thing. Most of this has been moved to the default XmlSerializationPolicy implementation, but you can customize this to change the eventual structure. This includes determining the names used.

Storage type

In the default policy, the way a field is stored is determined as follows to be one of: Element, Attribute, Text or Mixed. Mixed is a special type that allows for mixing of text and element content and needs some special treatment.:

• If the field has an annotation such as @XmlElement or XmlValue this will take precedence. The XmlValue tag will allow the field to hold element text content (direct only).

• If the serializer is a primitive this will normally be serialized as attribute

• If the serializer is a list, if there is an @XmlChildrenName annotation, this will trigger named list mode where a wrapper tag is used (element). Otherwise the list elements will be written directly as tags (even primitives) using a "transparent/anonymous" list.

• If a list has the @XmlValue tag (to actually support text content it needs to be a list of Any) this will allow the list to hold mixed content. This should also be polymorphic (but the annotation is required).

• If a primitive is written as tag this will use the name as tag name, and value as element content.

• A primitive written as TEXT will be text content only.

• Polymorphic properties are treated specially in that the system does not use/require wrappers. Instead it will use the tag name to determine the type. Either specified by @XmlPolyChildren or through the serialDescriptor of the type. This also works inside lists, even transparent (invisible) lists. If multiple polymorphic properties have the same subtags this is undefined/an error (you can use @XmlPolyChildren to have different names).

  A custom policy is able to determine on individual bases whether this transparent polymorphism should be used, but the default policy provides an overall toggle (which also respects the autopolymorphic property of the configuration builder). The default will always trigger transparent mode if XmlPolyChildren is present.

• If the serializer is polymorphic this enforces tag mode. If @XmlPolyChildren is specified or autoPolymorphic is set it triggers transparent polymorphism mode where the child name is used to look up the property it belongs to. (note that this is incorrect with multiple properties that could contain the same polymorphic value - unless @XmlPolyChildren overrides it).

• Otherwise it will be written as a tag

Tag/attribute name

The way the name is determined is configured/implemented through the configured policy. The documentation below is for the default policy. This is designed to allow customization by users.

Based upon the storage type, the effective name for an attribute is determined as follows:

• @XmlSerialName at property declaration site
• @XmlSerialName at type declaration site
• @SerialName at property declaration site
• property name at property declaration site (note that the @SerialName annotation is invisible to the encoder)

The effective name for a regular tag is determined as follows for normal serializers:

• @XmlSerialName at property declaration site
• @XmlSerialName at type declaration site
• @SerialName at type declaration site
• type name at type declaration site. The default type declaration type name is the Kotlin/Java type name (and long). The system will try to shorten this by eliding the package name. This is configurable in the policy.

The effective name for a polymorphic child is determined as follows:

• If the child is transparent, the annotations/serial name of the effective type is used (unless overridden by @XmlPolyChildren)
• If the child is not transparent, the container is treated as a regular tag. It will have a type attribute to contain the serial name of the type (shortened to share the package name with the container). The value will use the default name value.

The implementation if serialization in the Kotlin compiler does not allow distinguishing between the automatic name and a @SerialName annotation. The default implementation supposes that if there is a '.' character in the name, this is a java type name and it strips the package out. (This also when it could be an attribute).

If you need to support names with dots in your format, either use the @XmlSerialName annotation, or use a different policy.

Annotations

Special type

The CompactFragment class is a special class (with supporting serializer) that will be able to capture the tag soup content of an element. Instead of using regular serialization its custom serializer will (in the case of xml serialization) directly read all the child content of the tag and store it as string content. It will also make a best effort attempt at retaining all namespace declarations necessary to understand this tag soup.

Alternatively the serialutil subproject contains the nl.adaptivity.serialutil.MixedContent type that allows for typesafe serialization/deserialization of mixed content with the proviso that the serialModule must use Any as the baseclass for the content.

Modules

core

Container for the core library (versions)

core.common

All code shared between Javascript and Java (either jvm or android)

core.common-nonshared

All code that is common, but not shared between Jvm and Android platforms

core.android

Code specific to the Android platform (Pulls in core.java as API dependency). This is a regular jar rather than an AAR as the only specific thing to Android is the XML library

core.java

Implementation of the shared code for Java based platforms (both Android and JVM)

core.js

Javascript based implementation

core.jvm

Code unique to the JVM platform (Pulls in core.java as API dependency)

Serialization

The kotlinx.serialization plugin to allow serialization to XML

Serialization.java

The java version of the serialization plugin. Please note that it does not pull in the platform specific library. The core library is dependent on the actual platform used (JVM or Android). This library only pulls in the shared Java code.

Serialization.jvm

The JVM version merely uses the jvm platform xml library but the serialization is

Serialization.android

Serialization.js

The Javascript version of the serialization plugin. This is not yet implemented due to missing annotation support for javascript and the 0.6.0 version of kotlinx.serialization not supporting type annotations.

Serialization.test-android

An android test project to test serialization on Android.