Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but this looks like a typical application for fetchrow_hashref or fetchall_hashref .

 $hash_ref = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;

An alternative to fetchrow_arrayref . Fetches the next row of data and returns it as a reference to a hash containing field name and field value pairs. Null fields are returned as undef values in the hash.

$hash_ref = $sth->fetchall_hashref($key_field);

The fetchall_hashref method can be used to fetch all the data to be returned from a prepared and executed statement handle. It returns a reference to a hash containing a key for each distinct value of the $key_field column that was fetched. For each key the corresponding value is a reference to a hash containing all the selected columns and their values, as returned by fetchrow_hashref().