Rake task updates a target differently than I expect

Question

I've an xml file which I'm trying to update through a rake task. Following are the xml and rake files:

test.xml

<root>
 <parent name='foo'>
  <child value=''/>
 </parent>
 <parent name='bar'>
  <child value=''/>
 </parent>
</root>

rakefile.rb

require 'rexml/document'

task :configure do

 xmlFilePath = "test.xml"
 xmlFile = File.new(xmlFilePath)
 xmlDoc = REXML::Document.new xmlFile

 xmlDoc.root.elements.each("//parent[contains(@name, 'foo')]"){
  |e| e.elements["//child"].attributes["value"] = "child of foo"
 }
 xmlDoc.root.elements.each("//parent[contains(@name, 'bar')]"){
  |e| e.elements["//child"].attributes["value"] = "child of bar"
 }

 xmlFile.close() 
 newXmlFile = File.new(xmlFilePath, "w")
 xmlDoc.write(newXmlFile) 
 newXmlFile.close()

end

After running this script, I was expecting this xml:

<root>
 <parent name='foo'>
  <child value='child of foo'/>
 </parent>
 <parent name='bar'>
  <child value='child of bar'/>
 </parent>
</root>

but instead I get this:

<root>
 <parent name='foo'>
  <child value='child of bar'/>
 </parent>
 <parent name='bar'>
  <child value=''/>
 </parent>
</root>

Any reasons why? Any help will be much appreciated.

Update: I'm able to update the attribute values by replacing the element iteration code

 xmlDoc.root.elements.each("//parent[contains(@name, 'foo')]"){
  |e| e.elements["//child"].attributes["value"] = "child of foo"
 }
 xmlDoc.root.elements.each("//parent[contains(@name, 'bar')]"){
  |e| e.elements["//child"].attributes["value"] = "child of bar"
 }

with the following

xmlDoc.root.elements["//parent[contains(@name, 'foo')]/child"].attributes["value"] = "child of foo"
xmlDoc.root.elements["//parent[contains(@name, 'bar')]/child"].attributes["value"] = "child of bar"

but I still don't know why the iteration code doesn't work.

Rake task updates a target differently than I expect

0 Answers0