Class REXML::Document
In: temp/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   doctype   encoding   expanded_name   name   new   node_type   parse_stream   root   stand_alone?   version   write   xml_decl  

Constants

DECLARATION = XMLDecl.default   A convenient default XML declaration. If you want an XML declaration, the easiest way to add one is mydoc << Document::DECLARATION DEPRECATED Use: mydoc << XMLDecl.default

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.

Public Instance methods

<<( child )

Alias for add

add( child )

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

clone()

Should be obvious

doctype()

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

encoding()

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

expanded_name()

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

name()

Alias for expanded_name

root()

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

stand_alone?()

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

version()

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

write( output=$stdout, indent=-1, transitive=false, ie_hack=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.

See also the classes in the rexml/formatters package for the proper way to change the default formatting of XML output

Examples 

  Document.new("<a><b/></a>").serialize

  output_string = ""
  tr = Transitive.new( output_string )
  Document.new("<a><b/></a>").serialize( tr )
output:output an object which supports ’<< string’; this is where the 
  document will be written.
indent:An integer. If -1, no indenting will be used; otherwise, the indentation will be twice this number of spaces, and children will be indented an additional amount. For a value of 3, every item will be indented 3 more levels, or 6 more spaces (2 * 3). Defaults to -1
trans:If transitive is true and indent is >= 0, then the output will be pretty-printed in such a way that the added whitespace does not affect the absolute value of the document — that is, it leaves the value and number of Text nodes in the document unchanged.
ie_hack:Internet Explorer is the worst piece of crap to have ever been written, with the possible exception of Windows itself. Since IE is unable to parse proper XML, we have to provide a hack to generate XML that IE‘s limited abilities can handle. This hack inserts a space before the /> on empty tags. Defaults to false
xml_decl()

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

[Validate]