How do I convert a Ruby hash to XML?

Question

Here is the specific XML I ultimately need:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<customer>
  <email>[email protected]</email>
  <first_name>Joe</first_name>
  <last_name>Blow</last_name>
</customer>

But say I have a controller (Ruby on Rails) that is sending the data to a method. I'd prefer to send it as a hash, like so:

:first_name => 'Joe',
:last_name => 'Blow',
:email => '[email protected]'

So, how can I convert the hash to that XML format?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1739905/how-do-i-convert-a-ruby-hash-to-xml

Answer 1

ActiveSupport adds a to_xml method to Hash, so you can get pretty close to what you are looking for with this:

sudo gem install activesupport

require "active_support/core_ext"

my_hash = { :first_name => 'Joe', :last_name => 'Blow', :email => '[email protected]'}
my_hash.to_xml(:root => 'customer')

And end up with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<customer>  
   <last-name>Blow</last-name>  
   <first-name>Joe</first-name>  
   <email>[email protected]</email>
</customer>

Note that the underscores are converted to dashes.