TBXml empty tag text

Question

I am using TBXML in a project of mine and I was wondering

Is there a way to check if a tag contains no text, for instance

<Description/>

vs

<Description> This is text </Description>

When I use the debugger and type po [TBXML textForElement:groupdescription] it returns <object returned empty description> when the tag that was read is the one without text, the other one works perfectly. So my question is, how do I check for that?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you look at TBXML source you will find

+ (NSString*) textForElement:(TBXMLElement*)aXMLElement {
if (nil == aXMLElement->text) return @"";
return [NSString stringWithCString:&aXMLElement->text[0] encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
}

so,

if you will do po @"" on gdb - you will get "object returned empty description"

I think you should check text length maybe... Actually, TBXML is a light xml parser and doesn't include xml validation etc. That's why it's so fast ;)

Answer 2

Incase others are facing the same problem. TBXML has these class functions

+ (NSString*) textForElement:(TBXMLElement*)aXMLElement {
    if (nil == aXMLElement->text) return @"";
    return [NSString stringWithCString:&aXMLElement->text[0] encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
}

+ (NSString*) textForElement:(TBXMLElement*)aXMLElement error:(NSError **)error {
    // check for nil element
    if (nil == aXMLElement) {
        *error = [TBXML errorWithCode:D_TBXML_ELEMENT_IS_NIL];
        return @"";
    }

    // check for nil text value
    if (nil == aXMLElement->text || strlen(aXMLElement->text) == 0) {
        *error = [TBXML errorWithCode:D_TBXML_ELEMENT_TEXT_IS_NIL];
        return @"";
    }

    return [NSString stringWithCString:&aXMLElement->text[0] encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
}

By using the second it does the checking for you. To my knowledge most of the calls like this one have an +error version.

Please note that it needs a **error.