How to correctly access xml attributes using pugixml? - c++

Question

I'm new to xml, and using the pugixml documentation I haven't been able to read a node attribute to the console. The core of the issue is that I don't understand how the node accessing structure works and I haven't been able to figure it out using my code.
The code provided is a lightly modified line from the actual pugixml manual, so I'm not sure why it isn't working.
XML FILE LOADED
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<settings description="settings root description">
<!--settings for the options menu-->
<options description="game options">
<resolution description="resolution in 16:9 ratio">6</resolution>
<volume description="volume setting">0</volume>
</options>
</settings>
C++ CODE TRYING TO USE XML FILE
//set up and load settings xml doc
pugi::xml_document settingsXML;
pugi::xml_parse_result settingsResult = settingsXML.load_file("SFMLVania/include/Settings.xml");
std::cout << "Root description: " << settingsXML.root().attribute("description").as_string();
I'm expecting to see:
"Root description: settings root description"
in the console.
Instead, I'm getting:
"Root description: "
SECOND ATTEMPT -- to try and just get any data and find out where I am in the tree:
std::cout << "Second attempt: " << settingsXML.first_attribute().as_string();
All I got from the second attempt was the console spitting out: "Second attempt: "

Answer 1

It turns out, my load path didn't exist, I had forgotten to use ../ to go up a directory and out of the Debug folder where the .exe was stored. I figured this out by testing the load result that could be passed as a bool.
if (settingsResult)
{
std::cout << "returned true\n";
}
else
std::cout << "returned false\n";
if (!settingsResult)
{
std::cout << "also returned false\n";
}
I included some redundant returns in case the bool value didn't function as expected.
The result showed that there was no file loaded (it returned false), and when I reexamined my file structure and added the ../ as a test to the file path, it returned true.

Answer 2

For anyone that comes across this, you can prevent this error by adding a minimal parse check after the assigning of settingsResult like this:
pugi::xml_document settingsXML;
pugi::xml_parse_result settingsResult = settingsXML.load_file("SFMLVania/include/Settings.xml");
// Catch parsing error
if (!settingsResult )
{
std::cout << "ERROR: " << settingsResult.description() << '\n';
return -1;
}
This will catch a bad parse and log the error to the console.