Convert XML collection (of Pivotal Tracker stories) to Ruby hash/object

Question

I have a collection of stories in an XML format. I would like to parse the file and return each story as either hash or Ruby object, so that I can further manipulate the data wi

Answer 1

Kind of one-liner solution would be something like this:

# str_xml contains your xml
xml = Nokogiri::XML.parse(str_xml)
xml.search('//story').to_a.map{|node| node.children.inject({}){|a,c| a[c.name] = c.text if c.class == Nokogiri::XML::Element; a}}

which returns an array of hashes:

>> xml.search('//story').to_a.map{|node| node.children.inject({}){|a,c| a[c.name] = c.text if c.class == Nokogiri::XML::Element; a}}
=> [{"id"=>"16376", "story_type"=>"feature", "url"=>"http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/16376", "estimate"=>"2", "current_state"=>"accepted", "description"=>"A description", "name"=>"Receivable index listing will allow selection viewing", "requested_by"=>"Tony Superman", "owned_by"=>"Tony Superman", "created_at"=>"2009/11/04 15:49:43 WST", "accepted_at"=>"2009/11/10 11:06:16 WST", "labels"=>"index ui,receivables"}, {"id"=>"17427", "story_type"=>"feature", "url"=>"http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/17427", "estimate"=>"3", "current_state"=>"unscheduled", "description"=>"", "name"=>"Validations in wizards based on direction", "requested_by"=>"Matthew McBoggle", "created_at"=>"2009/11/17 15:52:06 WST"}, {"id"=>"17426", "story_type"=>"feature", "url"=>"http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/17426", "estimate"=>"2", "current_state"=>"unscheduled", "description"=>"Manual payment needs a description field.", "name"=>"Add description to manual payment", "requested_by"=>"Tony Superman", "created_at"=>"2009/11/17 15:10:41 WST", "labels"=>"payment process"}, {"id"=>"17636", "story_type"=>"feature", "url"=>"http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/17636", "estimate"=>"3", "current_state"=>"unscheduled", "description"=>"The SMS and email templates needs to be editable by merchants.", "name"=>"Notifications are editable by the merchant", "requested_by"=>"Matthew McBoggle", "created_at"=>"2009/11/19 16:44:08 WST"}]

However, this ignores all XML attributes, but you haven't said what to do with them anyway... ;)