Class: REXML::Document

Class REXML::Document |
In: | rexml/document.rb
Parent: | Element

Represents a full XML document, including PIs, a doctype, etc. A Document has a single child that can be accessed by root(). Note that if you want to have an XML declaration written for a document you create, you must add one; REXML documents do not write a default declaration for you. See |DECLARATION| and |write|.

Methods

add add_element clone doc_type encoding expanded_name new parse parse_stream root stand_alone? version write xml_decl

Public Class methods

new( source = nil, context = {} )

Constructor @param source if supplied, must be a Document, String, or IO. Documents have their context and Element attributes cloned. Strings are expected to be valid XML documents. IOs are expected to be sources of valid XML documents. @param context if supplied, contains the context of the document; this should be a Hash. NOTE that I'm not sure what the context is for; I cloned it out of the Electric XML API (in which it also seems to do nothing), and it is now legacy. It may do something, someday... it may disappear.

parse_stream( source, listener )

Stream parser. The source will be parsed as a Stream. If a block is supplied, yield will be called for tag starts, ends, and text. If a listener is supplied, the listener will also be notified, by calling the appropriate methods on events. The arguments to the block will be: IF TAG START: "tag name", { attributes } (possibly empty) IF TEXT: "text" IF TAG END: "/tag name" The listener must supply the following methods: tag_start( "name", { attributes } ) tag_end( "name" ) text( "text" ) instruction( "name", "instruction" ) comment( "comment" ) doctype( "name", *contents )

Public Instance methods

clone()

Should be obvious

expanded_name()

According to the XML spec, a root node has no expanded name

add( child )

We override this, because XMLDecls and DocTypes must go at the start of the document

add_element(arg=nil, arg2=nil)

root()

@return the root Element of the document, or nil if this document has no children.

doc_type()

@return the DocType child of the document, if one exists, and nil otherwise.

xml_decl()

@return the XMLDecl of this document; if no XMLDecl has been set, the default declaration is returned.

version()

@return the XMLDecl version of this document as a String. If no XMLDecl has been set, returns the default version.

encoding()

@return the XMLDecl encoding of this document as a String. If no XMLDecl has been set, returns the default encoding.

stand_alone?()

@return the XMLDecl standalone value of this document as a String. If no XMLDecl has been set, returns the default setting.

write( output, indent=-1, transitive=false )

Write the XML tree out, optionally with indent. This writes out the entire XML document, including XML declarations, doctype declarations, and processing instructions (if any are given). A controversial point is whether Document should always write the XML declaration (<?xml version='1.0'?>) whether or not one is given by the user (or source document). REXML does not write one if one was not specified, because it adds unneccessary bandwidth to applications such as XML-RPC. @param output an object which supports '<< string'; this is where the document will be written @param indent (optional) if given, the starting indent for the lines in the document.

parse( source )

This and parse_stream could have been combined, but separating them improves the speed of REXML