Rails XML parsing

Question

Can anybody tell me how to parse this on rails.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<message>
  <param>
    <name>messageType</name>
    <value>SMS</value>
  </param>
  <param>
    <name>id</name>
    <value>xxxxxxxxxxxxxx</value>
  </param>
  <param>
    <name>source</name>
    <value>xxxxxxxxxxx</value>
  </param>
  <param>
    <name>target</name>
    <value>xxxxxxxxxxxxx</value>
  </param>
  <param>
    <name>msg</name>
    <value>xxxxxxxxxxxxx</value>
  </param>
  <param>
    <name>udh</name>
    <value></value>
  </param>
</message>

I have no control on this xml, but I hope I can make the parameter looks like this before saving to my database

message"=>{"msg"=>"sampler", "id"=>"1", "target"=>"23123", "source"=>"312321312"}

here is the parameter I received when it access my method

message"=>{"param"=>[{"name"=>"id", "value"=>"2373084120100804002252"}, {"name"=>"messageType", "value"=>"SMS"}, {"name"=>"target", "value"=>"23730841"}, {"name"=>"source", "value"=>"09156490046"}, {"name"=>"msg", "value"=>"Hello world via iPhone"}, {"name"=>"udh", "value"=>nil}]}

Answer 1

There are a lot of Ruby XML parsing libraries. However, if your XML is small, you can use the ActiveSupport Hash extension .from_xml:

Hash.from_xml(x)["message"]["param"].inject({}) do |result, elem| 
  result[elem["name"]] = elem["value"] 
  result 
end
# => {"msg"=>"xxxxxxxxxxxxx", "messageType"=>"SMS", "udh"=>nil, "id"=>"xxxxxxxxxxxxxx", "target"=>"xxxxxxxxxxxxx", "source"=>"xxxxxxxxxxx"}

Answer 2

You should use Nokogiri for parsing xml. Its pretty fast.

Answer 3

Also, try checking out REXML for more complex problems.