Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Do you know where your variables are?
 
PerlMonks  

comment on

( [id://3333]=superdoc: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Description

XML::Simple - Trivial API for reading and writing XML (esp config files)

XML::Simple loads an XML file in memory, in a convenient structure, that can be accessed and updated, then output back.
A number of options allow users to specify how the structure should be built. It can also be cached using Data::Dumper

Why use XML::Simple?

  • XML configuration files, small table, data-oriented XML
  • simple XML processing
  • you don't care much about XML but find it convenient as a standard file format, to replace csv or a home-brewed format

Why NOT use XML::Simple?

  • your XML data is too complex for XML::Simple to deal with:
    - it includes mixed content (<elt>th<is>_</is>_ mixed content</elt>)
    - your documents are too big to fit in memory
    - you are dealing with XML documents
  • you want to use a standard-based module (XML::DOM for example)

Personal notes

I don't use XML::Simple in production but the module seems quite mature, and very convenient for "light" XML: config files, tables, generally data-oriented, shallow XML (the XML tree is not really deep), as opposed to document-oriented XML.

Update: make sure you read the documentation about the forcearray option or you might get bitten by repeated elements being turned into an array (which is OK) _except_ when there is only one of them, in which case they become just a hash value (bad!).
for example this document:

<config dir="/usr/local/etc" log="/usr/local/log"> <user id="user1"> <group>root</group> <group>webadmin</group> </user> <user id="user2"> <group>staff</group> </user> </config>
when loaded with XMLin and not forcearray option becomes
{ 'dir' => '/usr/local/etc', 'log' => '/usr/local/log', 'user' => {'user1' => {'group' => ['root', 'webadmin']}, 'user2' => {'group' => 'staff'} } };
Note the 2 different ways the group elements are processed.

I also found that XML::Simple can be a little dangerous in that it leads to writing XML that is a little too simple. Often when using it I end up with an XML structure that's as shallow as I can possibly make it, which might not be really clean.


In reply to XML::Simple by mirod

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post; it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
    <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
  • Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
  • Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.
Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others romping around the Monastery: (9)
As of 2024-03-28 23:56 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found