From: Phrogz <gavin@...>
Date: 2007-03-23T02:10:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Pulling text from elements with REXML

On Mar 22, 11:02 am, Paul Willis <i...@paulwillis.com> wrote:
> Gavin Kistner wrote:
> > att = XPath.first( doc, '//kid/@stuff' )
> > I don't know what the XPath syntax is to select the value of an
> > attribute directly. I'd be interested to know if someone else knows it.
>
> Cheers, it was the kid/@stuff I needed...
>
> puts XPath.first( doc, '/root/kid/@stuff' )
>
> #=> some-other-text

Nice, I didn't realize that REXML::Attribute had such different output
for #inspect versus #to_s. It's nice, then, that you don't need to
call .value in this particular case. Just be aware that without
the .value call you still have an Attribute instance that can just be
treated as a string in some areas:

  att = XPath.first( doc, '//kid/@stuff' )

  puts att
  #=> some-other-text

  puts att.value + '-more'
  #=> some-other-text-more

  puts att + "-more"
  #=> tmp.rb:17: undefined method `+' for
      stuff='some-other-text':REXML::Attribute (NoMethodError)