Fluffless HTML creation syntax #3587

forthrin · 2025-12-16T08:56:09Z

forthrin
Dec 16, 2025

When using Nokogiri to build HTML, prefixing every single statement with doc casts rather a gloom over things.

Nokogiri::HTML::Builder.new do |doc|
  doc.html do
    doc.head do
      doc.title 'My Website'
      doc.meta(charset: 'UTF-8')
      doc.link(rel: 'stylesheet', href: 'styles.css')
    end
  end
end

There is this trick:

Nokogiri::HTML::Builder.new do |doc|
  doc.instance_eval do
    html do
      head do
        title 'My Website'
        meta(charset: 'UTF-8')
        link(rel: 'stylesheet', href: 'styles.css')
      end
    end
  end
end

Is it possible to have this built into Nokogiri so one gets it for free?

Nokogiri::HTML::Builder.newer do
  html do
    head do
      title 'My Website'
      meta(charset: 'UTF-8')
      link(rel: 'stylesheet', href: 'styles.css')
    end
  end
end

flavorjones · 2025-12-27T03:20:52Z

flavorjones
Dec 27, 2025
Maintainer

Nokogiri already supports this syntax, see https://nokogiri.org/rdoc/Nokogiri/XML/Builder.html

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require "bundler/inline"

gemfile do
  source "https://rubygems.org"
  gem "nokogiri"
end

x = Nokogiri::HTML::Builder.new do
  html do
    head do
      title 'My Website'
      meta(charset: 'UTF-8')
      link(rel: 'stylesheet', href: 'styles.css')
    end
  end
end

puts x.to_html
# => <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
#    <html><head>
#    <title>My Website</title>
#    <meta charset="UTF-8">
#    <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
#    </head></html>

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Fluffless HTML creation syntax #3587

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forthrin Dec 16, 2025

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flavorjones Dec 27, 2025 Maintainer

forthrin
Dec 16, 2025

flavorjones
Dec 27, 2025
Maintainer