XML Boxes

DrScheme provides support for generating XML output (which, as a special case, can be used to generate HTML). This consists of three entries in the Show menu:

Insert XML Box

Use this to insert a sub-editor in which you can enter literal XML source.

Insert Scheme Box

Write Scheme code within an XML Box using a Scheme Box. A typical use is to include the value of a variable in the midst of the XML content.

Insert Scheme Splice Box

A Scheme Splice Box is like a Scheme Box, except the Scheme expression must evaluate to a list, which is spliced into the XML content.

The output is in the x-expression format.

The first example shows a simple Web page template: the function consumes a title and name and generates a Web page for the named person. The first invocation shows the x-expression output, while the second shows how a user can convert this into actual XML syntax:

The second example shows the use of Scheme Splice Boxes. The combination of higher-order functions, lists and splicing results in an extremely powerful document generation tool.