xml newbie

[Colin Summers]

Okay, so I am scraping the FAA site and keeping track of some airplanes.

A lot of the time I get a tail number and I have it already, so I am
going to store the important information in a file that is
{tailnumber}.xml

That way I can add some of my own information (email address of owner,
airport last sighted).

I've never written any xml. But apparently there are gems I could add
to my Ruby installation which would let me write it.

Suggestions for where to start?

I assume I'll wind up with a file that has
<model>DA20</model>
<serial>408.21</serial>

and I can say things like
serial = xml('serial')
and
xml(serial) = '408.21'
right?

I can picture writing these things, but I bet someone has already done the work.

Thanks,
--Colin

 

[Gregory Brown]

Okay, so I am scraping the FAA site and keeping track of some airplanes.

A lot of the time I get a tail number and I have it already, so I am
going to store the important information in a file that is
{tailnumber}.xml

That way I can add some of my own information (email address of owner,
airport last sighted).

I've never written any xml. But apparently there are gems I could add
to my Ruby installation which would let me write it.

Suggestions for where to start?

You'll want to take a look at HPricot[0] and/or XML Builder[1]

[0] http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/hpricot/
[1] http://rubyforge.org/projects/builder

 

[cardboard42]

Okay, so I am scraping the FAA site and keeping track of some airplanes.

A lot of the time I get a tail number and I have it already, so I am
going to store the important information in a file that is
{tailnumber}.xml

That way I can add some of my own information (email address of owner,
airport last sighted).

I've never written any xml. But apparently there are gems I could add
to my Ruby installation which would let me write it.

Suggestions for where to start?

I assume I'll wind up with a file that has
<model>DA20</model>
<serial>408.21</serial>

and I can say things like
serial = xml('serial')
and
xml(serial) = '408.21'
right?

I can picture writing these things, but I bet someone has already done the work.

Thanks,
--Colin

Why bother with xml at all? For something this small YAML would work
just as well and requires less work too.

require 'yaml'
planes = [ {:tailnumber => 'N1234Z', :model => 'DA20', :serial =>
'408.21'},
{:tailnumber => 'N1234AZ', :model => 'magic happy
plane', :serial => '42'} ]
#write planes
File.open("planes.yaml", "w") { |f| f.puts tree.to_yaml }

#read planes
planes = YAML.load(File.open("planes.yaml"))
puts planes.first[:serial]
#408.21

 

[cardboard42]

Okay, so I am scraping the FAA site and keeping track of some airplanes.

A lot of the time I get a tail number and I have it already, so I am
going to store the important information in a file that is
{tailnumber}.xml

That way I can add some of my own information (email address of owner,
airport last sighted).

I've never written any xml. But apparently there are gems I could add
to my Ruby installation which would let me write it.

Suggestions for where to start?

I assume I'll wind up with a file that has
<model>DA20</model>
<serial>408.21</serial>

and I can say things like
serial = xml('serial')
and
xml(serial) = '408.21'
right?

I can picture writing these things, but I bet someone has already done the work.

Thanks,
--Colin

Why bother with xml at all? For something this small YAML would work
just as well and requires less work too.

require 'yaml'
planes = [ {:tailnumber => 'N1234Z', :model => 'DA20', :serial =>
'408.21'},
{:tailnumber => 'N1234AZ', :model => 'magic happy
plane', :serial => '42'} ]
#write planes
File.open("planes.yaml", "w") { |f| f.puts tree.to_yaml }

#read planes
planes = YAML.load(File.open("planes.yaml"))
puts planes.first[:serial]
#408.21

Errr tree.to_yaml should of course be planes.to_yaml. It's late

 

[Gregory Brown]

Why bother with xml at all? For something this small YAML would work
just as well and requires less work too.

Oh, for some reason I thought the OP was scraping XML files and wanted
to keep the structure intact but just change parts. If all that is
needed is data persistence, YAML is a better choice for sure.