Pugixml get full string containing whitespace

Question

I'm trying to read an XML file with the structure

<name>search_name</name>
<Polygon>
    <outerBoundaryIs>
        <LinearRing>
            <coordinates>
                        -25.0,30.0,0 -26.0,30.4,0 
            </coordinates>
        </LinearRing>
    </outerBoundaryIs>
</Polygon>

The coordinate string is variable length with each tuple separated by a space. Pugixml correctly finds the node tags in the larger file, but when getting the coordinate text, it will only read the first value.

Snippet of how it is being loaded/parsed:

    pugi::xml_document doc;
    pugi::xml_parse_result result = doc.load_file("file.xml");

    pugi::xpath_node_set name_nodes = doc.select_nodes("//name");
    for(const auto& xpath_node : name_nodes)
    {
        auto name_node = xpath_node.node();
        if(name_node.text().as_string() == "search_name"))
        {
            auto path_node = name_node.parent().select_node("//coordinates");
            if(path_node)
            {
                // Prints "-25.0,30.0,0"
                std::cout << "Coordinate string: " << path_node.node().text().as_string() << std::endl;
            }
        }
    }

Is this a limitation of pugixml, or is there a different way it can be parsed to preserve whitespace? I need to get the entire coordinate string as a string.

I'm not familiar with Pugixml, and given how few questions there are about Pugixml on StackOverflow it might go unanswered for a while. Have you tried asking on the Pugixml discussion forum? — Eljay
– Eljay, Commented Jul 14 at 22:11

SeedlessKiwi · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-14 22:59:19Z

2

Xpath query was incorrect. Need to add a "." to the Xpath query to make it start at the selected node. Second query should be:

auto path_node = name_node.parent().select_node(".//coordinates");

The value that was being returned was the first occurrence of a coordinates node in the entire document, which just so happened to match.

answered Jul 14 at 22:59

SeedlessKiwi

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1 Comment

Eljay Jul 14 at 23:49

heh, well that explains why I wasn't able to reproduce the problem. :-D

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