Identifying where bad XML is

[Ben Burdick]

I am somewhat new to ruby and would appreciate any help on this
matter. I have a custom assertion for running tests
"assert_valid_xml_response" - which will parse the output and check
for any bad xml..

My problem is, that with many changes constantly taking place, and
many of these assertions taking place, it is sometimes hard to
pinpoint exactly where the bad XML is hiding.

Has anyone stumbled across a solution to easily zero in on the
location of bad XML?

 

[James Britt]

I am somewhat new to ruby and would appreciate any help on this
matter. I have a custom assertion for running tests
"assert_valid_xml_response" - which will parse the output and check for
any bad xml..

My problem is, that with many changes constantly taking place, and many
of these assertions taking place, it is sometimes hard to pinpoint
exactly where the bad XML is hiding.

Has anyone stumbled across a solution to easily zero in on the location
of bad XML?

Um, depends on what is making it bad.

If I have access to the complete XML document, then I try loading it
into IE or Firefox, which are pretty good at locating problems and
issuing useful info.

Or I run it though tidy or xmllint or something.

Often the problem is a stray '<' or '&' someplace, so grep + a decent
regexp could track it down, too.

If the XML is a set of repeated structures you could try using the REXML
stream or pull parser to read in chunks at a time and assemble smaller
sub-docs, and check those for well-formedness. If it fails it's easier
to then to write out the failing XML and inspect it.


James
--

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[Robert Klemme]

I am somewhat new to ruby and would appreciate any help on this
matter. I have a custom assertion for running tests
"assert_valid_xml_response" - which will parse the output and check
for any bad xml..

My problem is, that with many changes constantly taking place, and
many of these assertions taking place, it is sometimes hard to
pinpoint exactly where the bad XML is hiding.

Has anyone stumbled across a solution to easily zero in on the
location of bad XML?

What exactly do you mean by "bad"? Do you mean "ill formed"? In that case
any decent XML parser (validating and non validating) should give you
information about where it chokes. If you mean by "bad" that it doesn't fit
an XML Schema or DTD then a validating parser should point you where the
error lies.

Kind regards

robert