SimpleObject

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
USAGE
EXAMPLES
AUTHOR
SEE ALSO
POD ERRORS

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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:

/etc/dosemu.conf
dosemu.conf−drdos703.eval


/etc/passwd
948

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

SEE ALSO

perl(1), XML::Parser.

POD ERRORS

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:
Around line 165:

’=item’ outside of any ’=over’

Around line 214:

You forgot a ’=back’ before ’=head1’

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