Parsing Savon SOAP response with multiRef

Question

I am attempting to access a SOAP service using the Ruby gem Savon. I can connect to the service and make a request and receive the response, but I cannot parse the response.

The response contains multiple href references to multiRef elements. When I try to decode it using

response.to_hash[:get_user_risk_profile_response][:get_user_risk_profile_return][:href]

I get #id0. How do I follow the id0 reference?

The SOAP response is below. Thanks!

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <soapenv:Body>
    <getUserStatusResponse soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
      <getUserStatusReturn href="#id0"/>
    </getUserStatusResponse>
    <multiRef id="id0" soapenc:root="0" soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xsi:type="ns1:UserRiskProfileBean" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:ns1="http://xrisk.api.example.com">
      <parameters xsi:type="ns2:ArrayOf_tns3_ParamBean" xsi:nil="true" xmlns:ns2="http://api.example.com"/>
      <siteID xsi:type="soapenc:string">UNKNOWN</siteID>
      <userID xsi:type="soapenc:string">sam.wiggins</userID>
      <userRiskScore href="#id1"/>
      <userRiskScoreDT xsi:type="xsd:dateTime">2011-02-16T18:15:50.012Z</userRiskScoreDT>
    </multiRef>
    <multiRef id="id1" soapenc:root="0" soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xsi:type="xsd:int" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">640</multiRef>
  </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Answer 1

It seems that the best approach, for the moment, was to just roll my own parsing using XPath. It's crude and probably not very bullet proof, but will do the job until something better comes along.

class SavonResponseXMLParser

  def initialize(response_xml)
    @doc = REXML::Document.new(response_xml)
  end

  def get_property(property)
    property_value = nil
    elements = REXML::XPath.match(@doc, "//#{property}")
    if (elements.length == 1)
      element = elements[0]
      href = element.attributes['href']
      if (href)
        href =~ /^#id(\d+)/
        multiref_elements = REXML::XPath.match(@doc,"//multiRef[@id='id#{$1}']")
        if (multiref_elements.length == 1)
          multiref_element = multiref_elements[0]
          property_value = multiref_element.text 
        end
      else
        property_value = element.text
      end
    end
    return property_value
  end
end