---
title: Webgen::ContentProcessor::Builder
---
## Description

This content processor can be used to programatically create XHTML/XML documents
([Reference][1]). The top builder object is provided through the `xml` object. There are also other
objects provided by webgen available - have a look at the [erb documentation]({relocatable:
erb.html}).

> This extension is only available if you have installed the [builder][1] library. The preferred way
> to do this is via Rubygems:
>
>     gem install builder
{.exclamation}


## Examples

Here is a short sample of content that is valid Ruby and uses the special `xml` object:

    xml.h1("This a h1 header", :id => 'myid')

    xml.p do |p|
      p.text! "You can just write "
      p.b "your"
      p.text! "paragraphs here and"
      p.a("link", :href => "http://someurl.com")
      p.text! "them below. This is also a"
      p.i "nice"
      p.text! "format!"
    end

    xml.blockquote(:class => 'information') do |bq|
      bq.text! "Citations are easy too."
      bq.text! "Really. And you can assign them attributes."
    end

    xml.ul do |ul|
      ul.li "Lists"
      ul.li "aren't"
      ul.li "difficult"
      ul.li "either."
    end


Following is a complete example which shows how to use this extension in a page file which generates
a custom XML document (the `content` block has to be valid Ruby!):

    ---
    output_path_style: [:parent, :cnbase, ['.', :lang], '.xml']
    title: Person Object
    template: ~
    --- pipeline:builder
    xml.persons(:path => node.absolute_lcn) do |p|
      p.person do |b|
        b.firstname('Thomas')
        b.lastname('Leitner')
      end
      p.person do |b|
        b.firstname('Other first')
        b.lastname('Other last')
      end
    end

The above will produce the following output:

    <persons path="/test.xml">
      <person>
        <firstname>Thomas</firstname>
        <lastname>Leitner</lastname>
      </person>
      <person>
        <firstname>Other first</firstname>
        <lastname>Other last</lastname>
      </person>
    </persons>


[1]: http://builder.rubyforge.org "Homepage of builder library"