Rails - Jul 2005 - Rendering collection as xml

What is the preferred way to render a collection of objects as xml
wrapping in a start/end tag.  For example say I have a collection of
user objects and wanted the following xml:

<users>
  <user id="1">
    <name>Admin<name>
  </user>
  <user id="2">
    <name>Josh</name>
  </user>
</users>  

So do I use a render partial collection wrapping it in another call to
render that adds the <users></users> tags or is there a cleaner
approach?  I am doing this all over the place and would rather not
have a bunch of 3 line templates scattered everywhere.  I''m curious
how the backpack xml api renders things as it has very similar needs
to mine.

Josh

> So do I use a render partial collection wrapping it in another call to
> render that adds the <users></users> tags or is there a cleaner
> approach?  I am doing this all over the place and would rather not
> have a bunch of 3 line templates scattered everywhere.  I''m
curious
> how the backpack xml api renders things as it has very similar needs
> to mine.
I use Builder in Backpack wrapped behind an XmlFormatter service
class. So you have a call like XmlFormatter.format(users), which
return the xml snippet. You could also place this stuff inside a class
method on the User, if you feel its an integrate part of the User (I
usually wouldn''t).

Example:

xml.users do
  for user in users
    xml.user("id" => user.id) { xml.name(user.name) }
  end
end
-- 
David Heinemeier Hansson
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