From: Nikolay Pavlov <qpadla@...>
Date: 2007-09-05T02:32:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Need help in parsing REXML::Document

On Monday 03 September 2007 21:28:57 Phlip wrote:
> Outside of that trick, my code is much more flabby that usual for Hash
> contortions. Someone might be able to use .inject or something to get it
> down to fewer lines, in one pass.

Thanks Phlip. With your suggestions i have come to some thing like this at 
the end:

def parse_to_hash(node)
  normalize(xml_to_hash_of_arrays(node))
end

def xml_to_hash_of_arrays(node)
  hash = {}
  REXML::XPath.each node, '*' do |node|
    (hash[node.name.underscore.to_sym] ||= []) << if node.has_elements?
      parse_node(node)
    else
      (node.text || '').strip
    end
  end
end

def normalize(hash)
  return unless hash.kind_of?(Hash)
  hash.each do |key, value|
    value.each { |val| reduce(val) }
    hash[key] = *value
  end
end

But one thing is still missed. In my original example i want to move the 
attributes of the nodes (that hash_elements? == true) to the array, for 
example:

             <operation id="some id" sid="some sid">
               <trans>v3</trans>
               <data>v4</data>
             </operation> 

Should produce:

[{:id => "some id", :sid => "some sid", :trans => "v4", :data => "v4"}]  

-- 
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- Best regards, Nikolay Pavlov. <<<-----------------------------------    
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