From: Dan Kohn Date: 2005-09-15T18:56:34+09:00 Subject: REXML feature request: XPath.match.text & better text documentation Sean, et al, thanks for a great piece of software in REXML. I would appreciate if you would consider adding the text and texts method to XPath and Elements. I believe the following shows why it would be useful, but please let me know if this isn't clear enough. require "rexml/document" include REXML string = < OZ 0204 F Class ICN to LAX UNITED 48,164 Star Alliance 49,072 EOF doc = Document.new string.gsub!(/\s+| /," ") #This works fine: actsumarray = Array.new XPath.each( doc, "//td[@colspan='4']/child::*") { |cell| actsumarray << cell.text.to_s } puts actsumarray # 48,164 & 49,072 # But either of these would be much more convenient: # actsumarray = Xpath.match.text ( doc, "//td[@colspan='4']/child::*") # actsumarray = doc.elements.text.to_a( "//td[@colspan='4']/child::*") # Converting to text is also pretty confusing. # You might consider adding a method like # remove_tag (which should be enhanced to support # multiple tags). I suspect others would find it useful. def remove_tag( rexml_array,tag) # Removes tag but leaves the text inside the tag as text inside # the parent of the now removed tag while rexml_array.elements["//#{tag}"] rexml_array.elements["//#{tag}"].replace_with( Text.new( rexml_array.elements["//#{tag}"].text.strip)) end end # These sorts of examples would be great for the documentation # to show how much the results can vary. cell = doc.elements["//td[@class='t4']"] puts cell #[ugly HTML] puts cell.text.to_s # 0204 F Class puts cell.texts.to_s # 0204 F Class to remove_tag( cell, "a") #OZ 0204\ puts cell #F Class ICN to LAX puts cell.text.to_s #OZ puts cell.texts.to_s #OZ 0204 F Class ICN to LAX - dan -- Dan Kohn