I have a XML document similar to the following.
<library>
<artist name="a">
<album name="1"></album>
<album name="2"></album>
</artist>
<artist name="b">
<album name="8"></album>
<album name="9"></album>
</artist>
</library>`
I am coding an application in Vala on Ubuntu and using the libxml2 library for manipulating the XML document. I wanted to fetch all the album
nodes irrespective of their position in the document. I have written the following piece of code to do the aforementioned job.
document = Xml.Parser.parse_file (PATH_TO_DB);
...
Xml.XPath.Context context;
unowned Xml.XPath.Object *object;
context = new Xml.XPath.Context(document);
object = context.eval("//album");
if(object->nodesetval->is_empty())
return null;
return object->nodesetval->item(0);
...
This XPath query only returns the albums under artist a
, ie, albums 1 and 2. However, context.eval("/library/artist[@name="b"]/album");
is returning all the albums under artist b
.
The python equivalent of the above shown code is producing the desired result.
doc = libxml2.parseFile("data.xml")
ctxt = doc.xpathNewContext()
res = ctxt.xpathEval("//album")
What is wrong with the Vala code ?
First, you should to check that the returned object is a NodeSet by examining object->type == Xml.ObjectType.NODESET
.
Next, you are only returning the first item in the resulting nodeset. There are nodeset->length()
items.
void main() {
var document = Xml.Parser.parse_file ("file.xml");
run_query("//album", document);
run_query("/library/artist[@name=\"b\"]/album", document);
}
void run_query(string query, Xml.Doc* document) {
stdout.printf("Query: %s\n", query);
Xml.XPath.Context context;
unowned Xml.XPath.Object *object;
context = new Xml.XPath.Context(document);
object = context.eval(query);
assert(object->type == Xml.XPath.ObjectType.NODESET);
if(object->nodesetval->is_empty()) {
stdout.printf("empty");
return;
}
for (var i = 0; i < object->nodesetval->length(); i++) {
var node = object->nodesetval->item(i);
stdout.printf("node %s name=\"%s\"\n", node->name, node->get_prop("name"));
}
}
Produces:
Query: //album
node album name="1"
node album name="2"
node album name="8"
node album name="9"
Query: /library/artist[@name="b"]/album
node album name="8"
node album name="9"