There’s a fairly large data structure represented as an XML file. I don’t feel like parsing said file every time I need a piece of data out of it represented in Elixir terms. Since the data for current intent and purpose can be treated as static I thought of “compiling it in” so that it could be acc…

The @external_resource module attribute is a good place to start: Module — Elixir v1.20.2 You could point that at your XML file, then parse it into a module attribute: defmodule BagOfXml do @external_resource "path/to/some.xml" @parsed_data SomeOtherModu…

If things are static enough I usually parse the external file at compile time and pull only the parts I need in a module attribute.

Essentially that, but also if only parts of the data are needed at runtime, discarding everything not needed. Nobody wants unreasonable large beam files.

I suspected there must be something better! This looks exactly right for the purpose. The fact that it will recompile once the data file changes (rarely but still can’t be fully excluded) is an icing on the cake. Thanks guys.

Elixir Programming Language Forum

Static XML to Elixir "term"

Questions & Help Questions

silverdr March 9, 2022, 9:05pm 3

Could you be so kind as to elaborate a bit on that?