From: "phil.swenson@..." <phil.swenson@...>
Date: 2006-10-12T12:55:05+09:00
Subject: how would *YOU* write this??

 small_image_url = XPath.first(item, "SmallImage/URL").text
      small_image_height = XPath.first(item, "SmallImage/Height
Units").text
      small_image_width = XPath.first(item, "SmallImage/Width
Units").text
      medium_image_url = XPath.first(item, "MediumImage/URL").text
      medium_image_height = XPath.first(item, "MediumImage/Height
Units").text
      medium_image_width = XPath.first(item, "MediumImage/Width
Units").text
      large_image_url = XPath.first(item, "LargeImage/URL").text
      large_image_height = XPath.first(item, "LargeImage/Height
Units").text
      large_image_width = XPath.first(item, "LargeImage/Width
Units").text

Instead of writing this with this redundant style, how would a clever
rubyist write this?  Could write a method to take the image name as an
input and return 3 params...

def image_attributes (item, image_name)
   height = XPath.first(item, image_name + "/Height Units").text
   width = XPath.first(item, image_name + "/Width Units").text
   url = XPath.first(item, image_name + "/URL").text
   return height, width, url
end

small_image_height, small_image_width, small_image_url =
image_attributes(item, "SmallImage")
medium_image_height, medium_image_width, medium_image_url =
image_attributes(item, "MediumImage")
large_image_height, large_image_width, large_image_url =
image_attributes(item, "LargeImage")

However, I'm thinking there are much nicer ways to do it...

any thoughts?