From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2011-10-22T00:45:31+09:00
Subject: Re: NOKOGIRI::XML | Delete parent where child count = 0

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 4:09 AM, Ruby Mania <prateek123@gmail.com> wrote:
> All I wanna do is parse the XML below and delete Peter and Sam as they
> don't have any children
>
> {code}
> <Office  id="xyz" scope="node">
>  <John>
>    <age>23</age>
>    <ssn>230231111</ssn>
>  </John>
>  <Peter>
>  </Peter>
>  <John>
>    <age>25</age>
>    <ssn>222222222</ssn>
>  </John>
>  <Sam>
>  </Sam>
> </Office>
> {code}

Normally you should be able to pull this off with something like this XPath

//*[count(./*)=0 and matches(text(), "\A\s*\z")]

Apparently this does not work, but you can do this with Nokogiri

irb(main):060:0> puts d.xpath('//*[count(./*)=0]').select {|n|
/\A\s*\z/ =~ n.text}
<Peter>
 </Peter>
<Sam>
 </Sam>
=> nil

You can remove with

irb(main):067:0> d.xpath('//*[count(./*)=0]').select {|n| /\A\s*\z/ =~
n.text}.each &:remove
=> [#<Nokogiri::XML::Element:0x4c92fbc name="Peter"
children=[#<Nokogiri::XML::Text:0x4c92dfa "\n ">]>,
#<Nokogiri::XML::Element:0x4c90474 name="Sam"
children=[#<Nokogiri::XML::Text:0x4c90334 "\n ">]>]

irb(main):068:0> puts d
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Office id="xyz" scope="node">
 <John>
   <age>23</age>
   <ssn>230231111</ssn>
 </John>

 <John>
   <age>25</age>
   <ssn>222222222</ssn>
 </John>

</Office>
=> nil
irb(main):069:0>

Kind regards

robert

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