From: Mark Volkmann <mark@...>
Date: 2007-09-25T23:43:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Parsing through XML with REXML/XPath

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On Sep 25, 2007, at 9:34 AM, Peter Bailey wrote:

> Hi,
> I need to sort groups of xml data based on the first instances of
> particular elements down deep in the element structure of documents.
>   regs = []
>   regs = XPath.match(doc, "//registration")
>   regs.each do |reg|
>    codes = XPath.match(regs, "//issue[1]/")# { |element| puts
> element.text }
>    puts codes
>   end
> I'm getting:
>   <issue code='ENG'>Energy/Nuclear</issue>
>   <issue code='EDU'>Education</issue>
>   <issue code='AGR'>Agriculture</issue>
>   ...
>
> There are only 86 entries of <issue> in the document, but, I'm getting
> over 2,550 results here for "puts codes!" Obviously, it's looping  
> and I
> don't know why. It is pulling just the first entries, which I want,  
> but,
> obiously, it's doing it lots and lots of times.

I not sure what you mean by "sort groups of xml data based on the  
first instance of particular elements". Can you explain that more?  
Feel free to email me off-list if you'd like since this isn't really  
a Ruby question.

> I'm also trying to parse out these results, so that, I only end up  
> with
> the actual element text, not any attributes.

To ask for just the text inside an element, you need to use "text()".
For example, this would give you a node set containing all the text  
in the issue elements.

/registration//issue/text()

Note that you should only use one slash at the beginning to specify  
that the root element should be "registration".

> So, for example, in the
> above results, I only want "Energy/Nuclear, Education, and  
> Agriculture,"
> not any of the surrounding stuff. So, I've tried this, inside the  
> above:
>   codes.each do |code|
>   code.to_s.gsub!(/<issue code='[A-Z]{3}'>(.*?)\/*.*<\/issue>/, "$1")
>   puts code
>   end
>
> Thanks,
> Peter
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>



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Mark Volkmann



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