Month: August 2008

To parse a XML (or KML or PMML) file easily without using any complicated softwares, here is a piece of code that fits right in your excel sheet.

Just import this file using Excel, and then use the function getElement, after pasting the XML code in 1 cell.

It is used  for simply reading the xml/kml code as a text string. Just pasted all the xml code in one cell, and used the start ,end function (for example start=<constraints> and end=</constraints> to get the value of constraints in the xml code).

Simply read into the value in another cell using the getElement function.

heres the code if you ever need it.Just paste it into the VB editor of Excel to create the GetElement function (if not there already) or simply import the file in the link above.

Attribute VB_Name = “Module1”
Public Function getElement(xml As String, start As String, finish As String)
For i = 1 To Len(xml)
If Mid(xml, i, Len(start)) = start Then
For j = i + Len(start) To Len(xml)
If Mid(xml, j, Len(finish)) = finish Then
getElement = Mid(xml, i + Len(start), j – i – Len(start))
Exit Function
End If
Next j
End If
Next i
End Function

FOR Using the R Package for parsing XML …………………………reference this site –

http://www.omegahat.org/RSXML/Overview.html

or this thread from R -Help

> Lines <- ‘
+ <root>
+  <data loc=”1″>
+    <val i=”t1″> 22 </val>
+    <val i=”t2″> 45 </val>
+  </data>
+  <data loc=”2″>
+    <val i=”t1″> 44 </val>
+    <val i=”t2″> 11 </val>
+  </data>
+ </root>
+ ‘
>
> library(XML)
> doc <- xmlTreeParse(Lines, asText = TRUE, trim = TRUE, useInternalNodes = TRUE)
> root <- xmlRoot(doc)
>
> data1 <- getNodeSet(root, “//data”)[[1]]
> xmlValue(getNodeSet(data1, “//val”)[[1]])
[1] ” 22 “