R – Groovy – How to transfer XML nodes between documents

groovyxml

to the %subj%, I've tried:

def xp = new XmlParser();
def testsuite = xp.parseText( "<testsuite/>" );
def testsuite1 = new XmlParser().parse( "testsuite.xml" );
testsuite1.testcase.each {
  testsuite.append( it );
}

But this gives me an exception:

groovy.lang.MissingMethodException: No signature of method: groovy.util.Node.append() is applicable for argument types: (groovy.util.Node) values: {testcase …, … }

Despite of: http://groovy.codehaus.org/api/groovy/util/Node.html
says: boolean append(Node child)

So, how do I copy/move nodes between documents? (In a Groovy way – not using W3D DOM / JDOM…)

Thanks,
Ondra

Best Answer

The following works, I guessed as to what the contents of testsuite.xml might look like. It likely that your file is the problem.

def ts = "<testsuite/>"
def ts1 = """
<testsuite>
  <testcase>
    <foo>bar</foo>
  </testcase>
  <testcase>
    <foo>baz</foo>
  </testcase>
</testsuite>
""".trim()

def testsuite = new XmlParser().parseText(ts)
def testsuite1 = new XmlParser().parseText(ts1)

testsuite1.testcase.each {
  testsuite.append(it);
}

assert "bar" == testsuite.testcase[0].foo.text()
assert "baz" == testsuite.testcase[1].foo.text()

XML escape characters

There are only five:

"   &quot;
'   &apos;
<   &lt;
>   &gt;
&   &amp;

Escaping characters depends on where the special character is used.

The examples can be validated at the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Text

The safe way is to escape all five characters in text. However, the three characters ", ' and > needn't be escaped in text:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>"'></valid>

Attributes

The safe way is to escape all five characters in attributes. However, the > character needn't be escaped in attributes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute=">"/>

The ' character needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ":

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute="'"/>

Likewise, the " needn't be escaped in attributes if the quotes are ':

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid attribute='"'/>

Comments

All five special characters must not be escaped in comments:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<!-- "'<>& -->
</valid>

CDATA

All five special characters must not be escaped in CDATA sections:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<valid>
<![CDATA["'<>&]]>
</valid>

Processing instructions

All five special characters must not be escaped in XML processing instructions:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?process <"'&> ?>
<valid/>

XML vs. HTML

HTML has its own set of escape codes which cover a lot more characters.

Python – How to parse XML and count instances of a particular node attribute

I suggest ElementTree. There are other compatible implementations of the same API, such as lxml, and cElementTree in the Python standard library itself; but, in this context, what they chiefly add is even more speed -- the ease of programming part depends on the API, which ElementTree defines.

First build an Element instance root from the XML, e.g. with the XML function, or by parsing a file with something like:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
root = ET.parse('thefile.xml').getroot()

Or any of the many other ways shown at ElementTree. Then do something like:

for type_tag in root.findall('bar/type'):
    value = type_tag.get('foobar')
    print(value)

And similar, usually pretty simple, code patterns.