A fairly easy to use class for parsing XML elements (from Nokogiri) into value objects

xmlrecord.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'nokogiri'

class XMLRecord
	class << self
		def tag_handlers
			@tag_handlers ||= []
		end
	end

	def self.handle(tag_name=/.*/, namespace_prefix=/.*/, &block)
		self.tag_handlers << {:name => Regexp.new(tag_name), :ns => Regexp.new(namespace_prefix), :block => block}
	end
	
	def initialize(xml)
		xml.children.each do |child|
			self.class.tag_handlers.each do |handler|
				prefix = child.namespace.nil? == true ? "" : (child.namespace.prefix || "")
				
				if child.name =~ handler[:name] && prefix =~ handler[:ns]
					self.instance_exec child, &handler[:block]
				end
			end
		end
	end
end

if $0 == __FILE__

class Example < XMLRecord
	def strings
		@strings ||= []
	end
	
	attr_accessor :number

	handle 'string' do |child|
		self.strings << child.inner_text 
	end

	handle 'number' do |child|
		self.number = child.inner_text.to_i
	end
end


xml_string = "<file>
<strings>
	<number>1</number>
	<string>One</string>
	<string>Two</string>
	<string>Three</string>
</strings>
<strings>
	<number>2</number>
	<string>Four</string>
	<string>Five</string>
</strings>
</file>"

xml_doc = Nokogiri::XML(xml_string)

examples = xml_doc.xpath('//file/strings').map { |child| Example.new(child) }
examples.each { |ex| puts ex.number.to_s + ". " + ex.strings.join(', ') }

end

__END__
$ ruby xmlrecord.rb
1. One, Two, Three
2. Four, Five