Question

how can i count the parents (or entries) in an xml file?

The XML below should show that I don’t know the entries in there so I need to count the tags to use them in a loop and save them in a QVector. From there on I could search the xml for a (now known) tag and get the childs and attributes (but thats another thing).
First step is to count the parents.

If anyone has a better solution then please let me know!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Content>
    <person1>
        <firstname>John</firstname>
        <surname>Doe</surname>
        <email>[e-mail]</email>
        <website>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe</website>
    </person1>
    <person2>
        <various>Some Text here.</various
        <website>http://www.google.com</website>
    </person2>
    <person3>
        <firstname>Jane</firstname>
        <surname>Doe</surname>
        <email>[e-mail]</email>
        <website>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe</website>
    </person3>
    <person4>
        <firstname>Matti</firstname>
        <surname>Meikäläinen</surname>
        <email>[e-mail]</email>
        <website>http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matti_Meikäläinen</website>
    </person4>
    <person5 Attribute="Test">
    </person5>
</Content>

I’ve tried to open the file and read it line per line while search for an RegExp (with less success) like one would do it in bash. But there must be a better solution with the XML functions from Qt4. Any suggestios?

Answer 1

I’ve found a solution. It’s not very nice but it works:

    QFile* file = new QFile("SomeFile.xml");
    QXmlStreamReader xml(file);

    QString ElementName = "Content";
    QString ElementName_2 = "Content";
    int i = 0;
    int k = 0;

    while( !xml.atEnd() && !xml.hasError() )
    {
        QXmlStreamReader::TokenType token = xml.readNext();

        if( token == QXmlStreamReader::StartElement )
        {
            if( xml.name().toString() != ElementName )
            {
                ElementName = xml.name().toAscii();
            }
            if( xml.name().toString() == ElementName_2 )
            {
                ElementName = xml.name().toAscii();
            }
        }
        if( token == QXmlStreamReader::EndElement )
        {
            if( xml.name().toString() == ElementName )
            {
                i++;
            }
            if( xml.name().toString() != ElementName_2 )
            {
                k++;
            }
        }
    }

    if(xml.hasError())
    {
        SCC_MsgBox(QString("%1 parsing error").arg(XMLname), "", xml.errorString(), "", 2, 3); // my own MsgBox implementation ...
        return 0;
    }
    else
    {
        i = k - i;
        return i;
    }

    xml.clear();

This one counts all Elements (k) and all Childs (i) and substracts Childs from Elements. So i get the amount of entries (persons in this case). If someone has a better solution then please post it.