From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2005-09-30T00:57:13+09:00
Subject: Re: REXML to extract only values from XML?

christopher.mcmahon@gmail.com wrote:
> Say I have an XML record like
> 
>  <Subscriber>
>    <name>
>      <firstName>CHRIS</firstName>
>      <lastName>MCMAHON</lastName>
>    </name>
>    <ssn>111223333</ssn>
>    </Subscriber>
> 
> I'd like to extract each value of each tag (without regard to
> hierarchy) and add it to an array:
> 
> ["CHRIS","MCMAHON","111223333"]
> 
> The REXML docs don't seem to address this.  I've tried various
> methods, but I can't seem to find the way to address only the contents
> of each tag.  Any suggestions would be welcome
> 
> 
> 
require 'rexml/document'

xml = "<Subscriber>
    <name>
      <firstName>CHRIS</firstName>
      <lastName>MCMAHON</lastName>
    </name>
    <ssn>111223333</ssn>
    </Subscriber> "

p REXML::Document.new( xml ).elements.to_a( "//*[text()]").map { |e|
  e.text.strip.empty? ? nil :  e.text.strip}.compact

Note that elements that appear to have only child elements also have 
newline characters, which you probably don't want.

(There may be a better way to ignore that sort of white space.)


James

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