new feature: adding support for creating XML with the Hiccup syntax

[DavidVujic]

It is now possible to use the python-hiccup library to create XML documents in the same concise and programmatic way as for creating HTML. Both share a lot of rules, but the specs differ for some things.

That is why I have added the python_hiccup.xml namespace with the same API as for the existing html:

• a render function
• a raw function

But why? There is already the etree package available

Yes, and that one is great! The hiccup syntax opens up for a more concise and flexible style of coding by using basic Python data structures instead of constructing an object hiearchy.

A simple example

Using etree:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.Element("data")
item = ET.SubElement(root, "item")
item.text = "Python"
tree = ET.ElementTree(root)
ET.dump(tree)

Using python_hiccup:

from python_hiccup.xml import render

render(["data", ["item", "Python"]])

The ouput from both is:

<data><item>Python</item></data>

I hope this addition will be useful for Python teams out there!