NAME¶
XML::SimpleObject - Perl extension allowing a simple object representation of a
parsed XML::Parser tree.
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()'.
AUTHOR¶
Dan Brian <dbrian@brians.org>
SEE ALSO¶
perl(1), XML::Parser.