From: "Skye Shaw!@#$" <skye.shaw@...>
Date: 2009-06-25T15:50:06+09:00
Subject: Re: HTML dom

On Jun 23, 1:48 pm, Robert Klemme <shortcut...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 23.06.2009 19:24,SkyeShaw!@#$ wrote:
>
> > On Jun 23, 8:55 am, Victor Tanvuia <victor.tanv...@tantanprod.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Hi,
>
> >> I'm trying to build a HTML page indexer in ruby and I'd like to be able
> >> to use DOM and or XPath on a document. The application is currently
> >> using REXML
>
> > Yes, REXML can be awkward if you're used to using the DOM. IMHO.
>
> Why do you say that?  REXML provides an XML DOM in similar ways as other
> XML libs.  You can even use XPath queries.

Not sure what you mean by similar. Similar in that there is a tree of
elements that can be manipulated, but not similar to anything called
DOM.

In REXML, an Element is an REXML::Element; which is a REXML::Parent
which is a REXML::Child (huh?) which includes REXML::Node.
There is no NodeList, createTextNode(), getElementById(), etc...

To get an element by its ID, I'd have to say something like:

my_document.root.elements("//@id['crap']").each { #do something with
crap }

I would have liked to been able to use the DOM when using REXML,
unfortunately REXML doesn't really support it.

> >> Is there a way to make REXML more permissive or is there another library
>
> > There's libxml bindings for Ruby, but I recall that library missing
> > getElementsByTagName and getElementsById. Though it does have a method
> > to query the DOM via Xpath.
>
> libxml won't help as Victor is not processing XML.

That should be fine.

> > Have you tried using REXML's SAX2 parser? I think it would be better
> > suited for your problem.
>
> No, his problem is that he used an XML tool to process HTML.  

Your right. He should never have been using REXML.

-Skye