http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=462958


in reply to "Dynamically" Accessing a HoH

If I were a user, I'd be annoyed by that format for $usr_string, so I'm going to assume you're not tied to it, and can have them supply something (slightly) more intuitive like depTar/name instead.

Using the power of unjustified assumptions makes coding much easier, you see... <grin>

my @keys = split '/', $usr_string;
my $ref = $xml;
$ref = $ref->{$_} for @keys;
print $ref;

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Obviously, this completely fails to check for error conditions of any kind (invalid keys owing to typos being the most obvious case). I'm assuming you know how to do that already. :-)


If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
    --Michael Flanders

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Re^2: "Dynamically" Accessing a HoH
by dave0 (Friar) on Jun 02, 2005 at 16:26 UTC
    Given that the input data was originally XML parsed with XML::Simple, if you're going to use a format like depTar/name for the user input, you can use XML::XPath to extract the results: 
    use XML::XPath;
use XML::XPath::XMLParser;

my $usr_string = "depTar/name";
my $xml = "<depTar><name>c_p20</name><loc>srvr1</loc></depTar>";

my $xp = XML::XPath->new(xml => $xml);
my $nodeset = $xp->find($usr_string);

foreach my $node ($nodeset->get_nodelist) {
        print $node->string_value(), "\n";
}

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