Question

I am attempting to build a simple method that creates an XML file from a database in ruby on rails. I feel like my code is right but I am not seeing all of the users in the XML.
I am a complete newbie to RoR.

Here’s my code:

def create_file        @users = User.find(:all)   file = File.new('dir.xml','w')   doc = Document.new    make = Element.new 'make'   @users.each do |y|     make.add_element 'name'     make.elements['name'].text  = y.name     make.add_element 'description'     make.elements['description'].text = y.description   end        doc.add_element make    file.puts doc   file.close end 

And my XML output:

<make>  <name>sammy</name><description>samsdescription</description>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/>  <name/><description/> </make> 

I don’t get why all the fields aren’t populated. Why is just one of the database entires showing up? I really appreciate the help.

Answer 1

There’s a bug in your code. In each iteration you create an element with add_element and then try to access that element with Elements#[]. But when you use a node name in Elements#[] it returns only the first matching node. So you are creating a node in every iteration but updating only the first one. Try to change the code to the following:

@users.each do |y|   name_node = make.add_element 'name'   name_node.text  = y.name   desc_node = make.add_element 'description'   desc_node.text = y.description end 

By the way, your XML structure is a bit strange. Wouldn’t it be more clear if you wrapped every name/description pair inside another node (say, user) and then have many user nodes?