Nested GPath expressions with XmlSlurper and findAll

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15928238

  •  03-04-2022
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Question

I'm trying to analyse an XML tree using XmlSlurper and GPath, and the behaviour of the findAll method confuses me.

Say, for example, that you have the following XML tree:

<html>
    <body>
        <ul>
            <li class="odd"><span>Element 1</span></li>
            <li class="even"><span>Element 2</span></li>
            <li class="odd"><span>Element 3</span></li>
            <li class="even"><span>Element 4</span></li>
            <li class="odd"><span>Element 5</span></li>
        </ul>
    </body>
</html>

Assuming that xml has been initialised through one of XmlSlurper's parse methods, the following code executes as one would expect:

// Prints:
// odd
// odd
// odd
xml.body.ul.li.findAll {it.@class == 'odd'}.@class.each {println it.text()}

On the other hand:

// Doesn't print anything.
xml.body.ul.li.findAll {it.@class == 'odd'}.span.each {println it.text()}

I'm struggling to understand why I can use the special @ property (as well as others, such as **), but not 'normal' ones.

I've looked at the API code, and what confuses me even more is that the getProperty implementation (found in GPathResult) seems to support what I'm trying to do.

What am I missing?

Was it helpful?

Solution

You need to iterate over every span, so you can use the spread-dot operator:

xml.body.ul.li.findAll {it.@class == 'odd'}*.span.each {println it.text()}
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