Lance Pollard

Dir["your-directory/**/*"].length

To find elements by attribute with nokogiri, no matter where the element/attribute is, use these: @doc = Nokogiri::XML(File.open("myFile.xml").read) # get elements with attribute: elements = @doc.xpath("//*[@*[attribute_name]]") # get just the attribute: attributes = @doc.xpath("//@*[attribute_name]") If you want them with a specific namespace, do this: # get elements with attributes from a given namespace: elements = @doc.xpath("//*[@*[namespace-uri()='http://foo.example.com']]") # get attributes from a given namespace: attributes = @doc.xpath("//@*[namespace-uri()='http://foo.example.com']")