From: Phlip <phlip2005@...>
Date: 2008-12-16T12:42:40+09:00
Subject: Re: How to use ReXML "in the wild"?

Kenneth McDonald wrote:

> I'd very much like to use ReXML's XPATH features to extract info from  
> Google's financial info pages, but find that Rexml chokes on the  
> Javascript, here's the result of trying to read in a page with this  
> bit of code:

I have studied REXML for many years, and I still can't figure out how to get it 
to recognize an &mdash; or similar advanced entity.

Like the other responder said, give up while you still can. libxml-ruby is also 
stable enough to give a shot - oh yeah, except it crashes on non-tiny inputs.

Aaaand...

> /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/parsers/treeparser.rb:92:in `parse':  
> #<RuntimeError: Illegal character '&' in raw string  

That's because REXML and your web browser disagree on the definition of 
well-formed. Your browser accepts a naked & inside a JavaScript tag, but REXML 
does not. REXML is technically correct, and your browser would have accepted 
&amp;&amp; here, but...

> a.length>0&&a[a.length-1].selectorText==".lastFinanceRule"}return false}

...browsers cannot correctly interpolate & appearing inside JavaScript literal 
strings, because some lowlife coder using Notepad might have actually wanted 
"&amp;" when they wrote "&amp;" - such as with document.write().

So, because REXML cannot accept normal HTML, due to hits and misses of standards 
compliance on all sides - you are better off with a dedicated parser!

-- 
   Phlip