NAME¶
XML::SimpleObject::LibXML - Perl extension allowing a simple(r) object
representation of an XML::LibXML DOM object.
SYNOPSIS¶
use XML::SimpleObject::LibXML;
# Construct with the key/value pairs as argument; this will create its
# own XML::LibXML object.
my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject(XML => $XML);
# ... or construct with the parsed tree as the only argument, having to
# create the XML::Parser object separately.
my $parser = new XML::LibXML;
my $dom = $parser->parse_file($file); # or $parser->parse_string($xml);
my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML ($dom);
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");
@children_names = $filesobj->children_names;
DESCRIPTION¶
This is a short and simple class allowing simple object access to a parsed
XML::LibXML 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. Some
will rightfully question placing another interface over the DOM methods
provided by XML::LibXML, but my experience is that people appreciate the total
simplicity provided by this module, despite its limitations.
USAGE¶
- $xmlobj = new
XML::SimpleObject::LibXML($parser->parse_string($XML))
- $parser is an XML::LibXML object.
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::LibXML object
using the child element NAME.
- $xmlobj->children('NAME')
- Called with an argument NAME, children() will return
an array of XML::SimpleObject::LibXML 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::SimpleObjects::LibXML objects for all children elements
of $xmlobj. Unlike XML::SimpleObject, XML::SimpleObject::LibXML retains
the order of these children.
- $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), although multiple elements of the same
name will not be identified. Use ' children()' instead.
- $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::LibXML;
my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML ($parser->parse_string($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 <dan@brians.org>
SEE ALSO¶
perl(1), XML::SimpleObject, XML::Parser, XML::LibXML.