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copied!<p>Everybody is just writing about negative issues so let's stress some positive issues. Errr, the only positive issue - less (in some cases <strong>much</strong> less) typing.</p> <p>I wrote GpFluentXMLBuilder just because I hate typing tons of code while creating XML documents. Nothing more and nothing less.</p> <p>The good point with fluent interfaces is that you don't have to use them in the fluent manner if you hate the idiom. They are completely usable in a traditional way.</p> <p>EDIT: A point for the "shortness and readability" view.</p> <p>I was debugging some old code and stumbled across this:</p> <pre><code>fdsUnreportedMessages.Add(CreateFluentXml .UTF8 .AddChild('LogEntry') .AddChild('Time', Now) .AddSibling('Severity', msg.MsgID) .AddSibling('Message', msg.MsgData.AsString) .AsString); </code></pre> <p>I knew immediately what the code does. If, however, the code would look like this (and I'm not claiming that this even compiles, I just threw it together for demo):</p> <pre><code>var xmlData: IXMLNode; xmlDoc : IXMLDocument; xmlKey : IXMLNode; xmlRoot: IXMLNode; xmlDoc := CreateXMLDoc; xmlDoc.AppendChild(xmlDoc.CreateProcessingInstruction('xml', 'version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"')); xmlRoot := xmlDoc.CreateElement('LogEntry'); xmlDoc.AppendChild(xmlRoot); xmlKey := xmlDoc.CreateElement('Time'); xmlDoc.AppendChild(xmlKey); xmlData := xmlDoc.CreateTextNode(FormatDateTime( 'yyyy-mm-dd"T"hh":"mm":"ss.zzz', Now)); xmlKey.AppendChild(xmlData); xmlKey := xmlDoc.CreateElement('Severity'); xmlDoc.AppendChild(xmlKey); xmlData := xmlDoc.CreateTextNode(IntToStr(msg.MsgID)); xmlKey.AppendChild(xmlData); xmlKey := xmlDoc.CreateElement('Message'); xmlDoc.AppendChild(xmlKey); xmlData := xmlDoc.CreateTextNode(msg.MsgData.AsString); xmlKey.AppendChild(xmlData); fdsUnreportedMessages.Add(xmlKey.XML); </code></pre> <p>I would need quite some time (and a cup of coffee) to understand what it does.</p> <p>EDIT2: </p> <p>Eric Grange made a perfectly valid point in comments. In reality, one would use some XML wrapper and not DOM directly. For example, using OmniXMLUtils from the <a href="http://www.omnixml.com" rel="noreferrer">OmniXML</a> package, the code would look like that:</p> <pre><code>var xmlDoc: IXMLDocument; xmlLog: IXMLNode; xmlDoc := CreateXMLDoc; xmlDoc.AppendChild(xmlDoc.CreateProcessingInstruction( 'xml', 'version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"')); xmlLog := EnsureNode(xmlDoc, 'LogEntry'); SetNodeTextDateTime(xmlLog, 'Time', Now); SetNodeTextInt(xmlLog, 'Severity', msg.MsgID); SetNodeText(xmlLog, 'Message', msg.MsgData.AsString); fdsUnreportedMessages.Add(XMLSaveToString(xmlDoc)); </code></pre> <p>Still, I prefer the fluent version. [And I never ever use code formatters.]</p>

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