From: Luke Graham <spoooq@...>
Date: 2005-04-12T09:46:31+09:00
Subject: Re: groovy-like xml selection

On Apr 11, 2005 5:49 PM, Robert Klemme <bob.news@gmx.net> wrote:
> 
> "Luke Graham" <spoooq@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:c6afaed005041020493e803be4@mail.gmail.com...
> > Hi list,
> >
> > Ive taken a quick look at groovy for the first time, and saw an
> > interesting idea. Using xml to build an object tree, its possible to
> > write code like this...
> >
> > <foo>
> >   <bar>
> >     <jim age="1"/>
> >     <joe age="2"/>
> >   </bar>
> >   <bar/>
> > </foo>
> >
> > foo.bar.star.select { |it| it[@age] == "1" && it.parent.name == "bar"
> > && it.star.count == 0 }
> >
> > Note that foo.bar and foo.bar.star are not arrays, rather
> > transparently hide multiple elements in one object. Requesting a value
> > would be handled by the first element.
> >
> > The interesting part is that theres no quotes around the path
> > expression, its just evaluated in the context of bar. Complex
> > expressions could be broken into multiple selects and combined with
> > normal array operations.
> >
> > Im sure someones done the xml->object (method in this case) thing, but
> > has the native path trick been tried in ruby yet?
> 
> REXML comes pretty close.  I'm sure with a small addition like this one
> you get pretty far:
> 
> class REXML::Element
>   def method_missing(sym,*a,&b)
>     elements[sym.to_s] or super
>   end
> end
> 
> Maybe you should add this to module REXML::Node.
> 
> > PS. Extra kudos if someone implements not only the above, but foo.bar
> > { ... }, where foo and bar are methods...
> 
> Dunno what you mean here.  foo and bar have to be methods.

I have no idea what I meant either, it was late :(

-- 
spooq