From: Anders <schneida@...>
Date: 2005-12-02T06:32:31+09:00
Subject: Help getting around iconv on a PC

I've just started using Ruby again, and maybe it's because it's been
awhile since I've used it, but I've gotten stuck.  I want to use the
bloglines Webservice API.  So, I downloaded and installed it as well as
simple-xml, which it uses.  I run a simple test:

require 'webservice/bloglines'
print "done!\n"

Ruby chokes, saying:

:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require__': No such file to load -- iconv (LoadError)
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require'
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/webservice/parser.rb:4
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require__'
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require'
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/webservice/restapi.rb:7
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require__'
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require'
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/webservice/bloglines.rb:3
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require__'
	from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require'
	from test.rbw:1

As far as I can tell from looking around the web, iconv is a Unix
library, and I'm on a PC running WinXP.  How do I work around this?  To
figure out what the parser is using iconv for, I've included the code
below.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Anders Schneiderman
SEIU International
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# $Id: parser.rb,v 1.2 2004/09/29 04:19:10 date Exp $

require 'xmlsimple'
require 'iconv'

# handling invalid character
#	 Replace from invalid character to `?'
#	 (instead of numerical character reference).
#	 Because REXML convert numerical character reference at parsing time.
class Iconv
	def self.fix_malformed_characters(str)
		iconv = Iconv.new("UTF-8", "UTF-8")
		out = ""
		begin
			out << iconv.iconv(str)
		rescue Iconv::IllegalSequence => e
			out << e.success
			ch, str = e.failed.split(//n, 2)
			out << if respond_to?(:unknown_unicode_handler)
							 unknown_unicode_handler(ch)
						 else
							 "?"
						 end
			retry
		end
		return out
	end
end

module WebService

	class Parser
		def initialize
		end

		# for REXML
		def fix_encoding(xml_source)
			 xml_source.sub(/encoding="utf-8"\?>/i, 'encoding="UTF-8"?>')
		end

		def parse(xml_source)
			xml_source = fix_encoding(xml_source)
			xml_source = Iconv.fix_malformed_characters(xml_source)
			XmlSimple.xml_in(xml_source,
				{ 'ForceArray' => false, 'KeepRoot' => true }
			)
		end
	end

end