XML Parsing Help

[seansms]

For some reason, I can't get this test to pass.

    [Test]
    public void Sean_RenderXMLContent()
    {
        string XMLContent = @"<group><couponid>123</couponid><couponid>124</couponid></group>";
        string template2 = @"{{#group}}{{couponid}}{{/group}}";
        string expectedHTML = @"123124";
        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.LoadXml(XMLContent);
        object data = doc.DocumentElement;
        var output = Render.StringToString(template2, data);
        Assert.AreEqual(expectedHTML, output);
    }

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[abrinsmead]

I have the same issue. I don't think you are doing anything wrong.

[Pxtl]

Following up on this since I've been tinkering with Nustache, the XML behavior is weak and poorly defined and I'm tinkering with improving it. @seansms is probably never going to read this 3.5 years later, but we'll pretend he will.

Remember that, since <couponid> is repeated, it is therefore a collection, not an individual value.

This works:

    [Test]  
    public void Sean_RenderXMLContent()  
    {  
        string XMLContent = @"<group><couponid>123</couponid><couponid>124</couponid>  </group>";  
        string template2 = @"{{#group}}{{#couponid}}{{.}}{{/couponid}}{{/group}}";
        string expectedHTML = @"123124";  
        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();  
        doc.LoadXml(XMLContent);  
        object data = doc; 
        var output = Render.StringToString(template2, data);  
        Assert.AreEqual(expectedHTML, output);  
    }

Two things were wrong in your example:

object data = doc.DocumentElement;

This means the contextual object is now "group". If you want the unnamed root of your entire XML snippet so you can reference the root object by name (group, in this case) you just use object data = doc;

Otherwise, you should be leaving "group" out of your template and assuming that group is the default context.

Second, because couponid is repeated, it's actually a collection of nameless strings. Group isn't the array, couponid is - group effectively has only one child. I know, it's weird.

Now, the problem is that nustache xml getters don't support fetching grandchildren of xml objects - they only support either returning Xml Node Lists (which you can only iterate across, not index) or strings. So we can't say group.couponid or couponid.1 to get the first couponid.

I've got some PRs planned to fix that.

Edit: I'm silly. It takes xpath queries.

string template2 = @"{{#group/couponid}}{{.}}{{/group/couponid}}";

[Pxtl]

Sorry for calling the XML behavior weak - it is, at worst, counterintuitive. Xpath queries have as much if not more expressive power as Mustache dot paths. It's very inconsistent to switch to the xpath syntax, but after tinkering for a bit I can see that it works.

But it does seem to fail on cdata.