in reply to Parsing the data returned from the companies house API

You are looking at the key when what you want is the value:

        foreach my $key (keys %$decodedJSON)
            {
            if (is_hashref($key))    {
            ...

[download]

Most likely you wanted:

        foreach my $key (keys %$decodedJSON)
            {
            my $val = $decodedJSON->{ $key };
            if (is_hashref($val))    {
            ...

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Parsing the data returned from the companies house API
by irtuk (Novice) on Oct 17, 2022 at 14:49 UTC
    Thanks for your quick replies. I have managed to get a little farther, and might be sufficiently well informed to complete this now. I have new code like this: 
    use warnings;
use strict;
use JSON;
#use vsutils;
use Data::Dumper;
use Ref::Util qw(is_arrayref is_hashref);

my $companyNumber = 'NF001553';
    my $request =  "https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/com
+pany/".$companyNumber."/officers";
    my $curl = `curl -s --user sameAPIKeyAsBefore:""  $request` || die
+ "SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE\n";
    my $decodedJSON = decode_json($curl) || die "this is not JSON\n";
    if (is_hashref($decodedJSON)){
        for (sort keys %$decodedJSON) {
            if ($_ eq 'items'){
                print Dumper($decodedJSON->{$_});
                }
            }
        }

    [download]
    Now this is returning the directors and their addresses, so I should be able to move forward handling each element.
[reply]
[d/l]
      In fact, you don't need to iterate over hash keys to find out whether a key exists. There is a more effective way to do it: use exists. 
      my $decodedJSON = decode_json($curl) or die "this is not JSON\n";
if (is_hashref($decodedJSON)) {
    if (exists $decodedJSON->{items}) {
        for my $item (@{ $decodedJSON->{items} }) {
            ....
        }
    }
}

      [download]
      map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Brilliant, thanks so much for the help. For anyone else who wants to parse companies house API for officer and director data this code now does exactly what I want: 
        use warnings;
use strict;
use JSON;
use Data::Dumper;
use Ref::Util qw(is_arrayref is_hashref);

my $companyNumber = 'NF001553';
my $request =  "https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/company
+/".$companyNumber."/officers";
my $curl = `curl -s --user youwillneedtoreplacethiswithyourapikey:""  
+$request` || die "Problem with CURL call\n";
my $decodedJSON = decode_json($curl) or die "this is not JSON\n";
if (is_hashref($decodedJSON)) {
    if (exists $decodedJSON->{items}) {
        for my $item (@{ $decodedJSON->{items} }) {
                if (exists $item->{name}) {
                    print $item->{name}."\n";
                    }
                if (exists $item->{address}){
                    if (is_hashref($item->{address})){
                        if (exists $item->{address}->{address_line_1})
+{ print $item->{address}->{address_line_1}."\n";}
                        if (exists $item->{address}->{address_line_2})
+{ print $item->{address}->{address_line_2}."\n";}
                        if (exists $item->{address}->{locality}){ prin
+t $item->{address}->{locality}."\n";}
                        if (exists $item->{address}->{region}){ print 
+$item->{address}->{region}."\n";}
                        if (exists $item->{address}->{postal_code}){ p
+rint $item->{address}->{postal_code}."\n";}
                        }                    
                    }
                }
            }        
        }

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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