Creating custom elements

The defelem macro can be used to create element definitions. The simplest form is:

(defelem book)
(defelem author)

(author :first-name "Barry" :surname "Fungus"
  (book :year 1999 "One hundred ways to kill mice")
  (book :year 2012 "The Dummys guide to Sensible Eating Habits"))

after formatting, gives:

<author first-name="Barry" surname="Fungus">
  <book year="1999">One hundred ways to kill mice</book>
  <book year="2012">The Dummys guide to Sensible Eating Habits</book>
</author>

Of course, modelling the data structure with elements or attributes is a matter of taste; but with HelpMate, you can arbitrarity make that decision.

defelem can also take an optional doc-string:

(defelem publisher
  "A company or person that prepares and issues books, journals, or music for
  sale. Valid attributes: name, publisher-code, Valid child elements: author.")

(clojure.repl/doc publisher)
;=> -------------------------
;=> helpmate.html-test/publisher
;=>  A company or person that prepares and issues books, journals, or music for
;=>  sale. Valid attributes: name, publisher-code, Valid child elements: author.

Meta-data is also respected, and use of ^:deprecated is encouraged where appropriate (and actively used within the helpmate.html namespace). Other valid meta-data flags are:

• ^:non-void - denotes that the element must have an end-tag, such as <div> or <script> for example. Non-void tags will never self-close.
• ^:empty-tag - signals that the element is expected to have no child elements (and will throw an exception if evaluated with children), such as <img> or <br> elements. An empty tag implies that an element is also void.