in a ruby 2.2. script, I am writing an xml file
#filehandle << '<plist version="1.0">'
...
#filehandle << "\n<#{element_name}>"
..
during debugging , I would like to display the current content, how can I get it as it's not yet closed, but only cached ... ?
thanks for your suggestions
byebug
#filehandle.class
File
#filehandle
#<File:./AlbumData-new.xml>
You can execute these calls in order to display the content (I assume that the file is opened for reading and writing, i.e., mode is r+, w+ or a+)
#filehandle.flush # Make sure everything is written to disk
#filehandle.seek(0) # So we can read from the beginning
#filehandle.read # Read everything
Related
I have a 30MB XML file that contains some gibberish in the beginning, and so typically I have to remove that in order for Nokogiri to be able to parse the XML document properly.
Here's what I currently have:
contents = File.open(file_path).read
if contents[0..123].include? 'authenticate_response'
fixed_contents = File.open(file_path).read[123..-1]
File.open(file_path, 'w') { |f| f.write(fixed_contents) }
end
However, this actually causes the ruby script to open up the large XML file twice. Once to read the first 123 characters, and another time to read everything but the first 123 characters.
To solve the first issue, I was able to accomplish this:
contents = File.open(file_path).read(123)
However, now I need to remove these characters from the file without reading the entire file. How can I "trim" the beginning of this file without having to open the entire thing in memory?
You can open the file once, then read and check the "garbage" and finally pass the opened file directly to nokogiri for parsing. That way, you only need read the file once and don't need to write it at all.
File.open(file_path) do |xml_file|
if xml_file.read(123).include? 'authenticate_response'
# header found, nothing to do
else
# no header found. We rewind and let nokogiri parse the whole file
xml_file.rewind
end
xml = Nokogiri::XML.parse(xml_file)
# Now to whatever you want with the parsed XML document
end
Please refer to the documentation of IO#read, IO#rewind and Nokigiri::XML::Document.parse for details about those methods.
I'm trying to open a tmpfile in the system $EDITOR, write to it, and then read in the output. I can get it to work, but I am wondering why calling file.read returns an empty string (when the file does have content)
Basically I'd like to know the correct way of reading the file once it has been written to.
require 'tempfile'
file = Tempfile.new("note")
system("$EDITOR #{file.path}")
file.rewind
puts file.read # this puts out an empty string "" .. why?
puts IO.read(file.path) # this puts out the contents of the file
Yes, I will be running this in an ensure block to nuke the file once used ;)
I was running this on ruby 2.2.2 and using vim.
Make sure you are calling open on the file object before attempting to read it in:
require 'tempfile'
file = Tempfile.new("note")
system("$EDITOR #{file.path}")
file.open
puts file.read
file.close
file.unlink
This will also let you avoid calling rewind on the file, since your process hasn't written any bytes to it at the time you open it.
I believe IO.read will always open the file for you, which is why it worked in that case. Whereas calling .read on an IO-like object does not always open the file for you.
I am trying to open a non existent file and write to it, however when I run the script, no file is being created.
Here is the line of code
File.open("valid_policies.txt", 'a+').write(policy_number.to_s + "\n")
Instead of using .write try this instead:
File.open("valid_policies.txt", 'a+') {|f| f.write(policy_number.to_s + "\n") }
You're using:
File.open("valid_policies.txt", 'a+').write(policy_number.to_s + "\n")
That's a non-block form of open which doesn't automatically close the file. That means the data is most likely not being written to the file but is sitting in the IO buffer waiting to be flushed/synced. You could add a close but that only propagates non-idiomatic code.
Instead you can use:
File.write("valid_policies.txt", policy_number.to_s + "\n")
File.write automatically creates then writes to the file then closes it. It will overwrite existing files though.
If you aren't sure whether the file exists and want to create it if it doesn't, or append to it, then you use File.open with the a mode instead of a+. From the mode documentation:
"a" Write-only, each write call appends data at end of file.
Creates a new file for writing if file does not exist.
Using a+ will work but it unnecessarily opens the file for reading also. Don't do that unless you're sure that's what you have to do.
If I needed to append I'd use:
File.open('valid_policies.txt', 'a') do |fa|
fa.puts policy_number
end
That's idiomatic Ruby. puts will automatically "stringify" policy_number if it has a to_s method, which it should have since you're already calling it, and it'll also automatically add the trailing "\n" if it doesn't exist at the end of the string. Also, using the block form of open will automatically close the file when the block exists, which is smart house-keeping.
I read a text file to get some info from it and later on I need to rename the directory that the file sits in. I am not able do to that because the file is locked. If I comment out the function that reads from the file or if I manually unlock the file (unlocker utility) everything goes fine.
I am on ruby 1.8.7 (2010-08-16 patchlevel 302) [i386-mingw32]
This line leaves the file open File.open(file).readlines.each{|line|
These two lines leave the file open
my_file=File.open(file,"r")
my_file.collect {|line|
unless I close the file at the end using my_file.close
The man for core 1.8.7 of IO.html#method-c-open states
If the optional code block is given, it will be passed io as an argument, and the IO object will automatically be closed when the block terminates.
So I don't understand why the file is still open.
What would be the one line code in 1.8.7 to read a text file and close it automatically?
The documentation is clear. However, you're passing the block to collect. And since you're not passing it to open, you are responsible for closing the file.
To have file auto-closed, try this:
File.open(file,"r") do |f|
f.collect # or whatever
end
Try passing the block directly to the "open" call:
File.open(file, 'r') do |f|
f.each_line do |line|
# Process each line
end
end
Or if you just want the file contents in a single shot then try this:
lines = File.read(file).split(/\r?\n/)
If you want the block to close the file automagically without passing the file handle to a block, you can use the IO#readlines method of your File object.
array_of_lines = File.readlines('/tmp/foo')
This will read the entire contents of the file, then close the file handle. It's a good option whenever a file is small enough to fit easily into memory.
I want to write a ruby script that read from a config file that will have filenames, and then when I run the script it will take the tail of each file and output the console.
What's the best way to go about doing this?
Take a look at File::Tail gem.
You can invoke linux tail -number_of_lines file_name command from your ruby script and let it print on console or capture output and print it yourself (if you need to do something with these lines before you print it)
We have a configuration file that contain a list of the log files; for example, like this:
---
- C:\fe\logs\front_end.log
- C:\mt\logs\middle_tier.log
- C:\be\logs\back_end.log
The format of the configuration file is a yaml simple sequence , therefore suppose we named this file 'settings.yaml'
The ruby script that take the tail of each file and output the console could be like this:
require 'yaml'
require 'file-tail'
logs = YAML::load(File.open('settings.yaml'))
threads = []
logs.each do |the_log|
threads << Thread.new(the_log) { |log_filename|
File.open(log_filename) do |log|
log.extend(File::Tail)
log.interval = 10
log.backward(10)
log.tail { |line| p "#{File.basename(the_log,".log")} - #{line}" }
end
}
end
threads.each { |the_thread| the_thread.join }
Note: displaying each line I wanted to prefix it with the name of the file from which it originates, ...this for me is a good option but you can edit the script to change as you like ; is the same for the tails parameters.
if file-tail is missing in your environment, follow the link as #Mark Thomas posts in his answear; i.e you need to:
> gem install file-tail
I found the file-tail gem to be a bit buggy. I would write to a file and it would read the entire file again instead of just thelines appended. This happened even though I had log.backward set to 0. I ended up writing my own and figured that I would share it here in case any one else is looking for a Ruby alternative to the file-tail gem. You can find the repo here. It uses non_blocking io, so it will catch amendments to the file immediately. There is one caveat that can be easily fixed if you can program in the Ruby programming language; log.backward is hard coded to be -1.