From: Phlip <phlipcpp@...>
Date: 2005-09-24T13:26:40+09:00
Subject: Re: REXML Question

mike leonard wrote:

> I'm looking at REXML as a possible alternative to some things I've been
> doing with XSLT, but I haven't the foggiest notion of how to accomplish
> even the simplest transformations. Using REXML, how would I go about,
> say, translating all <em>'s into <emph>'s, or all <chapter>'s into <div
> type="chapter">'s?
>
> Thank you kindly in advance,

REXML is a DOM-style parser, not a transformer.

To do what you said, off the top of my head I would ...

  doc = Document.new(File.read('some.xml'))
  XPath.each(doc, '//em') do
    |node|
    node.name = 'emph'  #  or similar; check the members first
    end
 doc.write(File.open(''another.xml')) # or similar to write

There; a transformation in a bottle. Because XPath.each() returns the actual 
DOM nodes inside the parsed tree, and because writing on these nodes changes 
that tree, you can loop thru the nodes and manipulate them using clever 
XPath expressions. The system will accomodate most of the XML rules for you.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://www.greencheese.org/ZeekLand  <-- NOT a blog!!!