From: Tom Pollard <tomp@...>
Date: 2006-12-31T00:41:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Creating New Objects from REXML::Elements


On Dec 22, 2006, at 1:20 AM, eddieroger wrote:
> Tom Pollard wrote:
>> On Dec 21, 2006, at 1:40 AM, eddieroger wrote:
>>> [...] when I try to push my new objects into an array,
>>> the class identifies itself as an REXML::Element instead of a Movie.
>>> [...]
>>>  irb tells me this:
>>> irb(main):025:0> movies.class
>>> => Array
>>> irb(main):026:0> movies[1].class
>>> => REXML::Element
>>
>> I've encountered precisely this same problem!  I use REXML to pull
>> values out of an XML document and into an object; but, instead of my
>> objects, I end up with an Array of REXML::Element's.  :-(
>
> Have you solved this?

Finally. I realized I'd made the bone-headed mistake of not  
specifying an explicit return value in my function that processed the  
REXML fragment.  What I had was

class Evcase
     def from_rexml ( record )
         record.each_element do |el|
           begin
             self.send("ev_#{el.name.downcase}=", el.text)
           rescue
             Evcase.create_accessors(el.name.downcase)
             retry
           end
         end
     end
end

This was used from code that looked like

doc.root.get_elements('PROBLEM_RECORD').each do |rec|
     @cases << Evcase.new.from_rexml(rec)
end

This latter code depends on the Evcase object being returned from the  
_from_rexml method; instead, it was returning the REXML element  
('record') that had been passed in.  I'm not sure why it took me so  
long to see that.  Hope this helps someone else...

TomP