From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2005-08-29T04:27:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Help needed with rexml

2005/8/28, Michael <invalid@dev.null>:
> I've been struggling to properly parse some XML with rexml. I will fully
> admit my XML ignorance in advance. It would be easy enough to parse
> this with a regular expression instead, but I would prefer to use the
> right tool.
> 
> Here's a sample XML response:
> 
> <?xml version='1.0' encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
> <methodResponse>
>   <fault>
>                 <value>
>                         <struct>
>                                 <member>
>                                         <name>faultCode</name>
>                                                 <value>
>                                                         <int>5</int>
>                                                 </value>
>                                 </member>
>                                 <member>
>                                         <name>faultString</name>
>                                 <value>
>                                         <string>system error (nologin)</string>
>                                 </value>
>                         </member>
>                 </struct>
>         </value>
>         </fault>
> </methodResponse>
> 
> However, I can't anything useful out of it. For instance, I've been
> trying something like this:
> 
> require 'rexml/document'
> 
> file = File.new("test.xml")
> xml = REXML::Document.new(file)
> xml.elements.each { |i|
>         i.texts.each { |t|
>                 puts "Class: #{t.class}"
>                 puts "Value: #{t.value}"
>                 puts "String: #{t.to_s}"
>         }
> }

I'd start with something like this (untested, from memory):

xml.elements.each do |elem|
  p elem.node_type
  p elem.text
end

> This doesn't print anything useful for the class. Where am I going wrong
> with this? I've been digging through the documentation but I'm must not
> getting it.

What exactly do you want to extract?  You'll likely want some kind of
XPath expression with #each like in the tutorial.

Did you look at the tutorial?
http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml/docs/tutorial.html

Kind regards

robert