XML Tools Help Needed

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Classic Mac OS
#1

I’m trying to use XML tools in a script to extract attributes from an XML file but am only able to do it by parsing the XML, then repeating through the parsed contents. I was hoping there was a way to extract the attributes of the record I am looking for without repeating through until my search criteria has been met.

Mac OS 9.2 AS 1.8.3
XML Tools 2.5 (Latenite SW)

Here’s how I have it working now:



--these are what I am looking for, I want to get the top and left attributes of the xml element whose attributes match this criteria
set strXMLLayout to "_006"
set strLine to "line1"

--I've simplified my xml document by just including it in the script as text for posting purposes.
set theXML to "<layouts>
	<layout is ="_004" line_num="line1" top="483" left="199" type="AD"/>
	<layout is ="_005" line_num="line1" top="480" left="198" type="AD"/>
	<layout is ="_005" line_num="line2" top="390" left="222" type="S"/>
	<layout is ="_006" line_num="line1" top="481" left="199" type="AD"/>
	<layout is ="_006" line_num="line2" top="397" left="237" type="S"/>
</layouts>"

(*the only way I seem to be able to do this is 
to repeat through the contents of the parsed XML
and compare the "is" and "line_num" attributes.  Is
there any way to just get the item of the parsed
xml whose "is"="_006" and whose line_num="line1"?*)

set xmlParsedBox to XML contents of (parse XML theXML)
repeat with thisElement in xmlParsedBox
	set xmlLayout to (|is| of XML attributes of thisElement)
	if strXMLLayout = (|is| of XML attributes of thisElement) then
		set xmlLine to (line_num of XML attributes of thisElement)
		if strLine = (line_num of XML attributes of thisElement) then
			set strTop to (top of XML attributes of thisElement)
			set strLeft to (|left| of XML attributes of thisElement)
			set strStyle to (|type| of XML attributes of thisElement)
			exit repeat
		end if
	end if
end repeat

Anyone out there using XML tools know the syntax I am missing to be able to just extract the record I’m looking for? I’ve tried everything in the variation of:

set myTop to (top of xml attributes of xml element (whose |is| of xml attributes="_006" amd line_num of xml attributes="line1"))of xmlParsedBox
--does not compile

Any help would be super!

Thanks in advance.

#2

AppleScript does not provide for whose clauses on its own lists and records so its not possible to do what you want. Sadly, you have to loop through the structure of nested lists and records returned by XML Tools.

Further, AppleScript does not allow you to discover at run-time which properties exist in a record. Because of this AppleScript limitation, XML Tools returns lists of elements rather than records with element names as properties.

Sorry
-Mark

#3

Mark,

Thanks much for the reply - and for your top notch scripting tools!