From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2005-01-10T02:08:32+09:00
Subject: Re: REXML question

Tim Hunter wrote:
> I'm working on a program that uses REXML to parse SVG. One of the test
> programs declares this entity:
> 
> <!ENTITY shape "        <path d='M60,0 l60,0 l60,60 l0,60 l-60,60 l-60,0
> l-60,-60 l0,-60 z'/>">
> ]>
> 
> Then later it refers to the entity like this:
> 
> <g fill="yellow" stroke="red" stroke-width="8" >&shape;</g>
> 
> How do I get REXML to replace &shape; with its value and then parse it?

The tutorial
http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml/docs/tutorial.html

suggests that  REXML does replace internal entity references, but that 
they are "unreplaced" when you go fetch the document content as a whole.

You can get the expanded text if you explicitly ask for a node's text 
value, but (it seems) asking for the entire document string gives back 
the unexpanded version.

Take a look at the tutorial, because REXML's behavior with regard to 
entities is probably not what you expect.  For example, simply reading a 
text value may alter your source document if a node being read contains 
text that matches the value of an internal entity.  (Though this 
tutorial description does not match the actual behavior of some short 
code I wrote to see this in action, so the tutorial may be out of date, 
or my code is buggy.)


James