How to deserialize an array from XML

Hi,

to serialize an array to xml we can use:

an_array = [ 1, 2, 3]

an_array.to_xml

But to I can’t find a way to convert back XML to array. I didn’t find a method Array.from_xml like Hash.from_xml.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Gustavo

I have never done what you are trying but I know there is a way of converting a hash to an array (http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/ Hash.html#M000722) so you could do a double conversion. If you need a simple array then you could just flatten the resulting array of arrays.

I have looked again at this and I actually couldn't find a 'to_xml' method for Array or for anything else in Ruby. The method exists in Rails, though but for ActiveRecord instances, though, not for arrays. If what you are trying to do is converting a model instance to xml and backthis is how you could do:

# Converting to XML my_model_instance = MyModel.find my_id xml = my_model_instance.to_xml

# Generating instance from XML my_new_model = MyModel.new my_new_model.from_xml xml