I have a simple task of accessing the values of some attributes. Below is a simple script that uses Nokogiri::XML::Builder to create a simple xml doc.

require 'nokogiri'

builder = Nokogiri::XML::Builder.new(:encoding => 'UTF-8') do |xml|
  xml.Placement(:messageId => "392847-039820-938777", :system => "MOD", :version => "2.0") {
    xml.objects {
        xml.object(:myattribute => "99", :anotherattrib => "333")
        xml.nextobject_ '9387toot'
        xml.Entertainment "Last Man Standing"
    }
  }
end

puts builder.to_xml

puts builder.root.attributes["messageId"]

The results are below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Placement messageId="392847-039820-938777" version="2.0" system="MOD">
  <objects>
    <object anotherattrib="333" myattribute="99"/>
    <nextobject>9387toot</nextobject>
    <Entertainment>Last Man Standing</Entertainment>
  </objects>
</Placement>
C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.2-x86-mingw32/lib/nokogiri/xml/document.rb:178:in `add_child': Document already has a root node (RuntimeError)
    from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.2-x86-mingw32/lib/nokogiri/xml/node.rb:455:in `parent='
    from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.2-x86-mingw32/lib/nokogiri/xml/builder.rb:358:in `insert'
    from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.2-x86-mingw32/lib/nokogiri/xml/builder.rb:350:in `method_missing'
    from C:/Documents and Settings/etrojan/workspace/Lads/tryXPATH2.rb:15

The xml that is generated looks fine. However, my attempts to access attributes cause an error to be generated, "Document already has a root node". I don't understand why a puts statement would cause this error. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.