[MacRuby-devel] UTF8 Strings

[s.ross]

Laurent--

Sorry to be pesty about this XML thing, but I have Objective-C like this:

  NSString* xml = @"<people><person><name>steve</name><address>123 main</address></person><person><name>bob</name><address>345 First</address></person></people>";
  NSError* error = [NSError alloc];
  NSXMLDocument* xmlDoc = [[NSXMLDocument alloc] initWithXMLString:xml options:NSXMLDocumentTidyXML error:&error];
  NSLog(@"Created XML Document %@", xmlDoc);
  NSLog(@"Root element is %@", [xmlDoc rootElement]);
  
  NSArray* nodes = [xmlDoc nodesForXPath:@"//person" error:&error];
  NSLog(@"nodes are %@", nodes);
  for(int i = 0; i < [nodes count]; i++) {
    NSXMLElement* node = [nodes objectAtIndex:i];
    NSLog(@"Node %d is %@", i, node);
    NSArray *name = [[node nodesForXPath:@"//name" error:&error] objectAtIndex:0];
    NSArray *address = [[node nodesForXPath:@"//address" error:&error] objectAtIndex:0];
    NSLog(@"Name: %@", [name stringValue]);
    NSLog(@"Address: %@", [address stringValue]);
  }
}

Which behaves exactly as one might expect. It creates an XML document on which I can apply XPath queries. Using the nightly build from 5-December, the following MacRuby is different:

error = Pointer.new_with_type("@")
s = NSMutableString.new("<people><person><name>steve</name><address>123 main</address></person><person><name>bob</name><address>345 First</address></person></people>")
xmlDoc = NSXMLDocument.alloc.initWithData(s, options:1 << 10, error:error) <== Fails 
NSLog("Created XML Document %@", xmlDoc)
NSLog("Root element is %@", xmlDoc.rootElement)

This produces the output:

initializing
<people><person><name>steve</name><address>123 main</address></person><person><name>bob</name><address>345 First</address></person></people>
2009-12-06 12:39:50.318 macruby[5229:903] Created XML Document 
2009-12-06 12:39:50.321 macruby[5229:903] Root element is (null)

Note the following:

* initWithString is simply unrecognized as a method
* NSXMLDocumentTidyXML constant is not defined so I just transcribed the equivalent bitshift
* The resultant XML document is null

I'm not filing this as a bug because I think it might be a failure on my part to understand how this set of methods maps onto MacRuby.

Thanks,

Steve
 

On Dec 5, 2009, at 4:22 PM, Laurent Sansonetti wrote:

> Hi Steve,
> 
> On Dec 5, 2009, at 1:45 PM, s.ross wrote:
> 
>> My code receives XML data from a Web Service API call that is in UTF8 encoding. This winds up in a string.
>> 
>>    return_data = NSURLConnection.sendSynchronousRequest(@request, returningResponse: response, error: error)
>>    str = NSString.alloc.initWithData(return_data, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding)
>>    puts "******* response encoding it #{str.encoding}"
>> 
>> The result of the puts above is 'MACINTOSH'.
>> 
>> I suspect the encoding of the string is not UTF-8, because when I try to parse the XML using REXML, I get:
>> 
>> RegexpError: too short multibyte code
>> 
>> This occurs way in REXML:
>> 
>> /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.5/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.0/rexml/text.rb:132:in `check:'
>> 
>> In any case, my questions are:
>> 
>> 1) If anyone has run across this what did you do?
> 
> I don't believe REXML works. In any case, I would recommend to not use it. Since you're already using Cocoa, why not giving NSXMLDocument a try?
> 
>> 2) Why might the encoding be MACINTOSH and not UTF-8, as specified in the initWithData method call?
> 
> #encoding returns the fastest encoding available for the receiver. You may specify UTF-8 during the string creation, but if Cocoa can pick a smaller encoding at runtime (like ASCII) it will.
> 
> This is different from the Ruby 1.9 semantics and we have a plan to fix that in 0.6.
> 
>> 3) Suggestions?
> 
> See my comment in 1) :)
> 
> Laurent
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