I'm trying to parse a rss feed that looks like this for the attribute "date":
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<item>
<y:c date="AA"></y:c>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
I tried several different versions of this: (rssFeed contains the RSS data)
println(((rssFeed \\ "channel" \\ "item" \ "y:c" \"date").toString))
But nothing seems to work. What am I missing?
Any help would really be appreciated!
The "y" in <y:c is a namespace prefix. It's not part of the name. Also, attributes are referred to with a '@'. Try this:
println(((rssFeed \\ "channel" \\ "item" \ "c" \ "@date").toString))
Attributes are retrieved using the "@attrName" selector. Thus, your selector should actually be something like the following:
println((rssFeed \\ "channel" \\ "item" \ "c" \ "@date").text)
text method is generally preferable to toString since it will gracefully handle the case where your selector grabbed a chunk of XML rather than a Text node.Also, think about the difference between \ and \\. \\ looks for a descendent, not just a child, like this (note that it jumps from channel to c, without item):
scala> (rssFeed \\ "channel" \\ "c" \ "@date").text
res20: String = AA
Or this sort of thing if you just want all the < c > elements, and don't care about their parents:
scala> (rssFeed \\ "c" \ "@date").text
res24: String = AA
And this specifies an exact path:
scala> (rssFeed \ "channel" \ "item" \ "c" \ "@date").text
res25: String = AA
Think about using sequence comprehensions, too. They're useful for dealing with XML, particularly if you need complicated conditions.
For the simple case:
for {
c <- rssFeed \\ "@date"
} yield c
Gives you the date attribute from everything in rssFeed.
But if you want something more complex:
val rssFeed = <rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<item>
<y:c date="AA"></y:c>
<y:c date="AB"></y:c>
<y:c date="AC"></y:c>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
val sep = "\n----\n"
for {
channel <- rssFeed \ "channel"
item <- channel \ "item"
y <- item \ "c"
date <- y \ "@date" if (date text).equals("AA")
} yield {
val s = List(channel, item, y, date).mkString(sep)
println(s)
}
Gives you:
<channel>
<item>
<y:c date="AA"></y:c>
<y:c date="AB"></y:c>
<y:c date="AC"></y:c>
</item>
</channel>
----
<item>
<y:c date="AA"></y:c>
<y:c date="AB"></y:c>
<y:c date="AC"></y:c>
</item>
----
<y:c date="AA"></y:c>
----
AA
rssFeed? Shouldn't it berss?