User Guide

Using XML document nodes 423
Using this XML document as a starting point, the following examples demonstrate how to use
these script terms to access the data within various node levels of the XML structure.
The XML looks like the following example:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<e1>
<tagName attr1="val1" attr2="val2"/>
<e2>element 2</e2>
<e3>element 3</e3>
Here is some text
</e1>
The following script returns the name of the first XML tag:
put gParserObject.child[1].name
-- "e1"
The gParserObject variable contains the parsed XML. When used in the preceding script, it
refers to the root node of the XML document. The script term
child[1] refers to the first level of
nested tag, which is the
e1 tag.
To find out what kind of node the first tag is, use the
type method, as shown in the following
example:
put gParserObject.child[1].type
-- #element
To refer to nodes that are nested more than one level deep, use more than one level of child
reference. The following script returns the name of the first tag that is nested within the
e1 tag:
put gParserObject.child[1].child[1].name
-- "tagName"
The following script returns the name of the second tag that is nested within the e1 tag:
put gParserObject.child[1].child[2].name
-- "e2"
To refer to text data that occurs within a particular tag, use the text property. The text is a child
node of the tag that contains it, so you need an additional level of child reference. This script
returns the following string, which appears inside the
e2 tag from the previous XML example:
put gParserObject.child[1].child[2].child[1].text
-- "element 2"
In this example, the gParserObject variable refers to the root node of the XML. The child[1]
refers to the
e1 tag, which occupies the first level down in the XML’s nested structure. The
child[2] refers to the second tag within the e1 tag, which is the e2 tag. The last child[1] refers
to the text within the e2 tag, which is element 2. Finally, the text property is specified, so script
returns the text of the node rather than any other property of the node.
The fourth child of the
e1 tag is a line of text that reads here is some text. This text is a child
the same as the XML tags that precede it. You can get the type of this child the same way you get
other children.
The following script returns the type of the fourth child of the
e1 tag:
put gParserObject.child[1].child[4].type
-- #text