Loading xml document using Nokogiri and retrieving CDATA element SOLVED

rubyonrails-talk
1

SOLVED: Guess posting this got me more curious and I figured it out:

If I ask for my_file.xpath(“//EMBEDDED_FILE/DOCUMENT”).text

Nokogiri automatically takes the content within the cdata element within the DOCUMENT node and returns it to me without the cdata. Nice. So just a case of making things harder for myself.

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David,

Just to add some context, what you experienced pretty much applies to all lanuages that offer access to xml, and the reason is the W3C XML specification requires this behavior. When any XML parser reads the XML, CDATA sections are not preserved. The text property returns the text node of an element and if the element happens to have a CDATA section, then the text part if it is returned along with any other text content of the element.

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David,

Just to add some context, what you experienced pretty much applies to

all lanuages that offer access to xml, and the reason is the W3C XML

specification requires this behavior. When any XML parser reads the

XML, CDATA sections are not preserved. The text property returns the

text node of an element and if the element happens to have a CDATA

section, then the text part if it is returned along with any other

text content of the element.

Thanks Chris, that is helpful to know, so I wont make that same mistake with another xml parser.