From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2004-11-12T00:30:07+09:00
Subject: Fwd: [SUMMARY] GEDCOM Parser (#6)

My scripts should have sent in this quiz summary about an hour and a 
half ago.  It seems to have worked.  Strangely though, I haven't seen 
it show up on Ruby Talk.

I'm not sure if this is an error on my end or not.  I'll check into it 
and watch for it to occur again with future submissions.

In the meantime, here is this week's quiz summary.  Please forgive me 
if you get this message twice.

James Edward Gray II

Begin forwarded message:

> This quiz generated some interesting discussion on Ruby Talk.  Some 
> details of
> the GEDCOM format were talked about and the proper way to handle XML 
> output was
> debated.  I don't want to fill this summary with that conversation 
> (visit the
> archives for the "[QUIZ]" thread, if you missed it), but I do want to 
> point out
> the best point made about the XML format.  Here's what Hans Fugal had 
> to say
> about it:
>
> 	I take issue with the example XML in the quiz because I am from the
> 	"data in text, metadata in attributes" camp, and the name is not
> 	metadata. Here is a snippet of the output that I am generating:
> 	
> 	  <INDI id='@I11@'>
> 	    <NAME>Itha /Steele/<SURN>Steele</SURN>
> 	      <GIVN>Itha</GIVN>
> 	    </NAME>
> 	    <SEX>F</SEX>
> 	    <_UID>38CC16658231D511ACB8E07C9CE21378E1AF</_UID>
> 	    <FAMS>@F12@</FAMS>
> 	    <FAMC>@F4@</FAMC>
> 	  </INDI>
>
> I have yet to fall in love with XML like the rest of the world, but I 
> think Hans
> makes a good point here.
>
> The solution submitted by Florian Gross also supported YAML and 
> "pretty print"
> output.
>
> Formats aside, submitted solutions varied in how much they interpreted 
> from the
> GEDCOM file as opposed to simple translation.  The most common change 
> between
> input and output was to build a single entity out of GEDCOM's CONC and 
> CONT
> fields.
>
> XML generation techniques were also varied among submissions.  Some of 
> us
> built-up our own Strings, others used REXML, Cedric Foll used 
> XmlSimple and Jim
> Weirch used his Builder package, described here:
>
> 	http://onestepback.org/index.cgi/Tech/Ruby/BuilderObjects.rdoc
>
> Now let's look at a solution.  Here's the code submitted by Hans Fugal:
>
> 	#! /usr/bin/ruby
> 	require 'rexml/document'
> 	
> 	doc = REXML::Document.new "<gedcom/>"
> 	stack = [doc.root]
> 	
> 	ARGF.each_line do |line|
> 	  next if line =~ /^\s*$/
> 	
> 	  # parse line
> 	  line =~ /^\s*(\d+)\s+(@\S+@|\S+)(\s(.*))?$/ or raise "Invalid 
> GEDCOM"
> 	  level = $1.to_i
> 	  tag = $2
> 	  data = $4
> 	
> 	  # pop off the stack until we get the parent
> 	  while (level+1) < stack.size
> 		stack.pop
> 	  end
> 	  parent = stack.last
> 	
> 	  # create XML tag
> 	  el = nil
> 	  if tag =~ /@.+@/
> 		el = parent.add_element data
> 		el.attributes['id'] = tag
> 	  else
> 		el = parent.add_element tag
> 		el.text = data
> 	  end
> 	
> 	  stack.push el
> 	end
> 	doc.write($stdout,0)
> 	puts
>
> The above starts by creating a REXML document and a stack for managing
> parent/child relationships.  With setup out of the way, the code reads 
> from
> STDIN or files specified as command-line arguments, line by line.
>
> The processing of each line is a three stage process:  Parse the line, 
> unwind
> the stack to the parent for this element, and finally add the element 
> to the
> parent through the REXML API and push the new element onto the stack.
>
> When it's all been read, the complete XML is dumped to STDOUT.
>
> Obviously, Hans' solution doesn't do any special handling of the 
> GEDCOM format.
> It's a simple parse and print solution.
>
> If aren't going to use a great library like REXML to generate XML 
> output,
> remember to handle your own escaping.  (See my submission for an 
> example of code
> that forgot to do this!  Oops.)
>
> If you are a person who deals with GEDCOM files outside of this quiz, 
> you may
> want to check out these links passed to me by Jamis Buck:
>
> 	If you go to http://www.familysearch.com, you can search for
> 	ancestors/relatives and download their information in GEDCOM format.
> 	
> 	There are also a variety of tools available for taking a GEDCOM file
> 	and creating a website from it. In fact, if you go to
> 	http://www.onepagegenealogy.com you can have a wall-chart sized
> 	pedigree chart printed from a GEDCOM file for $20. (That particular
> 	project is a research project here at BYU.)
>
> My thanks go out to Jamis for our second contributed quiz, and a good 
> topic at
> that.  I've got two more contributed quizzes waiting in the wings, 
> which is
> great news.  Keep 'em coming!
>
> Stay tuned folks, because it's Game Show time with tomorrow's Ruby 
> Quiz...