How to check if a xml file contains consecutive nodes?

Question

I have some xml file that look like









Eleventh & Tenth International Conference on Correlation Optics

0277-786X

Springer








a.
INTRODUCTION
One of approaches of solving[11], [13], [8] the problem [1], [2], [6] [6] of light propagation in scattering media is the method of Monte Carlo statistical simulation^1–5. It is a set of techniques that allow us to find the necessary solutions by repetitive random sampling. Estimates of the unknown quantities are statistical means.
For the case of radiation transport in scattering 6 8 9 10 medium Monte Carlo method consists in repeated calculation of the trajectory 6 7 8 [9] of a photon in a medium based on defined environment parameters. Application of Monte Carlo method is based on the use of macroscopic optical properties of the medium which are considered homogeneous within small volumes of tissue. Models that are based on this method can be divided into two types: models that take into account the polarization of the radiation, and models that ignore it.
Simulation that is based on the previous models usually discards the details of the radiation energy distribution within a single scattering particle. This disadvantage can be ruled out (in the case of scattering particles whose size exceeds the wavelength) by using another method - reverse ray tracing. This method is like the one mentioned before on is based on passing a large number of photons through a medium that is simulated. The difference is that now each scattering particle has a certain geometric topology and scattering is now calculated using the Fresnel equations. The disadvantage of this method is that it can give reliable results only if the particle size is much greater than the wavelength (at least an order of magnitude).

in which there are link nodes in the form .... How can I find if there are 3 or more consecutive link nodes (separated by a comma and a space or simply space in the file and output them to a txt file.

I can do a regex search like (?:$$\d+$$\s*,\s*){2,}$$\d+$$ which will find 3 or more link nodes separated by a ",SPACE" or "SPACE" but they are not necessarily bound to have consecutive id's. How do I do this?

user_1940851 · Answer

So In order to comply with your requirements I hereby present to you my solution for your problem. I haven't thoroughly tested the possibility of duplicates. i.e. where some refs might just be a subset of a former result. But it should be no problem to sort them out.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;


public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.PreserveWhitespace = true;
    doc.Load("article.xml");

    //only selects 's that already have 3 or more refs. No need to check paragraphs that don't even have enough refs
    XmlNodeList nodes = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//*[count(xref[@ref-type='bibr' and starts-with(@rid,'ref')])>2]");

    List results = new List();

    //Foreach 
    foreach (XmlNode x in nodes)
    {
        XmlNodeList xrefs = x.SelectNodes(".//xref[@ref-type='bibr' and starts-with(@rid,'ref')]");
        List startEndOfEachTag = new List(); // we mark the start and end of each ref.
        string temp = x.OuterXml; //the paragraph we're checking

        //finds start and end of each tag xref tag
        foreach (XmlNode xN in xrefs){ //We find the start and end of each paragraph
            StartEnd se = new StartEnd(temp.IndexOf(xN.OuterXml), temp.IndexOf(xN.OuterXml) + xN.OuterXml.Length);
            startEndOfEachTag.Add(se);  
        }

        /* This comment shows the regex command used and how we build the regular expression we are checking with.
        string regexTester = Regex.Escape("2")+"([ ]|(, ))" + Regex.Escape("3");
        Match matchTemp = Regex.Match("2 3", regexTester);
        Console.WriteLine(matchTemp.Value);*/

        //we go through all the xrefs
        for (int i=0; i 2)
            {
                results.Add(tempRes); 
            }
        }
    }
    Console.WriteLine("Results: ");
    foreach(string s in results)
    {
            Console.WriteLine(s+"
");
    }

    Console.ReadKey();
}

The missing class

class StartEnd
{
    public int start=-1;
    public int end = -1;

    public StartEnd(int start, int end)
    {
        this.start = start;
        this.end = end;
    }
}

user_1940851 · Answer

My xpath is a bit rusty. But I am sure that you can make a better xpath than the one I presented below. A better xpath would only select the nodes that has 3 or more of a node that is of type bibr and contains rid that starts with ref. Any who. Here is my solution for getting the nodes you want.

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load("article.xml");

    XmlNodeList nodes = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//xref[@ref-type='bibr' and starts-with(@rid,'ref')]/parent::*");

    foreach(XmlNode x in nodes)
    {
        XmlNodeList temp = x.SelectNodes("//xref[@ref-type='bibr' and starts-with(@rid,'ref')]");
        //we only select those that have 3 or more references.
        if (temp.Count >= 3)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(x.InnerText);
        }
    }

    Console.ReadKey();

}

EDIT I played around a bit and the code below has an updated xpath which should get everything you want.

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load("article.xml");

    XmlNodeList nodes = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//*[count(xref[@ref-type='bibr' and starts-with(@rid,'ref')])>2]");

    foreach(XmlNode x in nodes){
        Console.WriteLine(x.InnerText);
    }

    Console.ReadKey();

}

user_78162 · Answer

Regular expressions aren't really good for hierarchical syntaxes. I would write C# code to read the XML and track the number of consecutive xref nodes separated only by ", " or " ".

  static void Main(string[] args)
  {
     using (var xmlStream = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream("ConsoleApp1.XMLFile1.xml"))
     {
        int state = 0; // 0 = Look for xref; 1 = look for separator
        string[] simpleSeparators = { " ", ", " };
        string rid = "0";
        StringBuilder nodeText = new StringBuilder();
        string[] consecutiveNodes = new string[3];

        System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings settings = new System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings();
        settings.DtdProcessing = System.Xml.DtdProcessing.Ignore;
        using (var reader = System.Xml.XmlReader.Create(xmlStream, settings))
        {
           while (reader.Read())
           {
              if (reader.IsStartElement("xref"))
              {
                 nodeText.Append("");
                 string nextRid = reader.GetAttribute("rid");
                 switch (state)
                 {
                    case 0:
                       break;
                    case 2:
                    case 4:
                       if (Math.Abs(GetIndex(nextRid) - GetIndex(rid)) > 1)
                          state = 0;
                       break;
                 }
                 state++;
                 rid = nextRid;
              }
              else if (reader.NodeType == System.Xml.XmlNodeType.Text)
              {
                 if (state > 0)
                    nodeText.Append(reader.Value);
                 if ((state % 2 == 1) && simpleSeparators.Contains(reader.Value))
                       state++;
              }
              else if ((reader.NodeType == System.Xml.XmlNodeType.EndElement) && (state > 0))
              {
                 nodeText.AppendFormat("", reader.Name);
                 consecutiveNodes[state / 2] = nodeText.ToString();
                 nodeText.Clear();
                 if (state > 3)
                 {
                    Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}{2}", consecutiveNodes[0], consecutiveNodes[1], consecutiveNodes[2]);
                    state = 0;
                 }
              }
              else if (reader.IsStartElement())
              {
                 nodeText.Clear();
                 state = 0;
              }
           }
        }
     }
  }

  static int GetIndex(string rid)
  {
     int start = rid.Length;
     while ((start > 0) && Char.IsDigit(rid, --start)) ;

     start++;
     if (start < rid.Length)
        return int.Parse(rid.Substring(start));
     return 0;
  }

This code running on your sample data outputs:

[2], [3], [4]
6910

I updated the code to exclude:

[11], [13], [8]

because ref11, ref13 and ref8 are not consecutive id's as requested in your question.

How to check if a xml file contains consecutive nodes?

3 Answers