SYNOPSIS
use XML::SimpleObject;
# Construct with the key/value pairs as argument; this will create its
# own XML::Parser object.
my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject(XML => $XML, ErrorContext => 2);
# ... or construct with the parsed tree as the only argument, having to
# create the XML::Parser object separately.
my $parser = new XML::Parser (ErrorContext => 2, Style => "Tree");
my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject ($parser->parse($XML));
my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files")->child("file");
$filesobj->name;
$filesobj->value;
$filesobj->attribute("type");
%attributes = $filesobj->attributes;
@children = $filesobj->children;
@some_children = $filesobj->children("some");
@chilren_names = $filesobj->children_names;
DESCRIPTION
This is a short and simple class allowing simple object access to a parsed XML::Parser tree, with methods for fetching children and attributes in as clean a manner as possible. My apologies for further polluting the XML:: space; this is a small and quick module, with easy and compact usage. See XML::SimpleObject::LibXML for the same interface for XML::LibXML.USAGE
- $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject($parser->parse($XML))
-
$parser is an XML::Parser object created with Style ``Tree'':
my $parser = new XML::Parser (ErrorContext => 2, Style => "Tree");
After creating $xmlobj, this object can now be used to browse the XML tree with the following methods.
- $xmlobj->child('NAME')
- This will return a new XML::SimpleObject object using the child element NAME.
- $xmlobj->children('NAME')
- Called with an argument NAME, children() will return an array of XML::SimpleObject objects of element NAME. Thus, if $xmlobj represents the top-level XML element, 'children' will return an array of all elements directly below the top-level that have the element name NAME.
- $xmlobj->children
-
Called without arguments, 'children()' will return an array of XML::SimpleObject
s for all children elements of $xmlobj. These are not in the order they occur in
the XML document. - $xmlobj->children_names
- This will return an array of all the names of child elements for $xmlobj. You can use this to step through all the children of a given element (see EXAMPLES). Each name will occur only once, even if multiple children exist with that name.
- $xmlobj->value
- If the element represented by $xmlobj contains any PCDATA, this method will return that text data.
- $xmlobj->attribute('NAME')
- This returns the text for an attribute NAME of the XML element represented by $xmlobj.
- $xmlobj->attributes
- This returns a hash of key/value pairs for all elements in element $xmlobj.
EXAMPLES
Given this XML document:
<files> <file type="symlink"> <name>/etc/dosemu.conf</name> <dest>dosemu.conf-drdos703.eval</dest> </file> <file> <name>/etc/passwd</name> <bytes>948</bytes> </file> </files>
You can then interpret the tree as follows:
my $parser = new XML::Parser (ErrorContext => 2, Style => "Tree"); my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject ($parser->parse($XML)); print "Files: \n"; foreach my $element ($xmlobj->child("files")->children("file")) { print " filename: " . $element->child("name")->value . "\n"; if ($element->attribute("type")) { print " type: " . $element->attribute("type") . "\n"; } print " bytes: " . $element->child("bytes")->value . "\n"; }
This will output:
Files: filename: /etc/dosemu.conf type: symlink bytes: 20 filename: /etc/passwd bytes: 948
You can use 'children()' without arguments to step through all children of a given element:
my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files")->child("file"); foreach my $child ($filesobj->children) { print "child: ", $child->name, ": ", $child->value, "\n"; }
For the tree above, this will output:
child: bytes: 20 child: dest: dosemu.conf-drdos703.eval child: name: /etc/dosemu.conf
Using 'children_names()', you can step through all children for a given element:
my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files"); foreach my $childname ($filesobj->children_names) { print "$childname has children: "; print join (", ", $filesobj->child($childname)->children_names), "\n"; }
This will print:
file has children: bytes, dest, name
By always using 'children()', you can step through each child object, retrieving them with 'child()'.