From: Eric Armstrong <Eric.Armstrong@...>
Date: 2006-06-15T05:05:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Processing mixed content with REXML ??

Robert Klemme wrote:
 >
 > If I'm not mistaken each_element works recursively
 > - so you get all children.
 >
You're thinking of each_recursive, which does
that. But both methods return elements /only/,
not text nodes.

To get the text, you use Element.text--which
only returns the /first/ text element, or
Element.texts, which returns all of them,
but without any way I can see to seqeunce them
with elements that are mixed in (XML mixed
content model)

Example
-------
    <p>A <b>bold</b> word<p>

Structure
---------
    elem: <p>
       text: "A "
       elem: <b>
          text: "bold"
       text: " word"

 From <p>:

   * text() gives you "A "
   * each_element gives you <b> (b.text => "bold"
   * texts() gives you ["A ", " word"]

But there is no way I can to see to determine
whethe the <b> element comes before or after
" word" in the node sequence.

Surely Element has a getChildren or getNodes method?
I don't see an inclusion or inheritance in the API
docs that show me one, but perhaps I missed it.

On the other hand, it could be that this capability
is simply missing from REXML, and I should be using
a different package.