Let's say this is the location element: <.location>blah...<./location>
It can be empty like this: <.location/>
Is there a way to detect the backslash in the empty element in order to not return it?
+1
A:
If what you really want is the text inside location tags, you can find those easily with the right XPath:
doc.search('//location/text()')
If, for some reason, you actually need the location element itself, use this:
doc.search('//location/text()/..')
Pesto
2009-11-04 15:29:43
big thanks it'll be fixed this way, enough.in fact, reading the xml from my browser, it actually displays a <.location/>, but hpricot just reopen the tag and enclose the rest of the doc; hence the problem.
Ben None
2009-11-04 15:43:11
A:
<location/> is semantically identical to <location></location>, and should be treated as such. To find all empty tags, just skip elements which do not have any child nodes (including text).
dismal_denizen
2009-11-04 21:08:36
To be consise, this flickr api method is concerned : http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.people.getInfo.html.When <location>..</location> is empty, hpricot returns it like if it was getting something like <person>...<location><photosurl>...</photourl>etc...</location></person>, in words as if location was enclosing more than it should be.From a browser you just can see that flickr is returning <location/>.Very confusing.
Ben None
2009-11-05 11:54:07