Parsing and manipulating XML

hoppfrosch has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello all,

I'm looking for some code to read and manipulate a XML-node (preferred based on XML::LibXML)

I've got the following given XML-structure from an external project:

<Build-Doc>
  <Build>
    text.mak
    <Targets>all</Targets>
    <Nmake></Nmake>
  </Build>
</Build-Doc>
[download]

Now I want to read and manipulate the text-contents of the <Build> node only - i.e the content "text.mak" - wheras the childnodes <Targets> and <Nmake> should stay untouched. What I tried:

use XML::LibXML;
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $xmldoc = $parser->parse_file( $filepath );
my $value = $xmldoc->findvalue( "/Build-Doc/Build[1]" );
# This returns "   text.mak'n    all" - which I DON'T want!
# What I want to get is "    text.mak" only ...

# How do I manipulate "text.mak" and leave the rest of my 
# xml-structure untouched?
[download]

Thanks for your ideas!

Comment on Parsing and manipulating XML Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Parsing and manipulating XML by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Apr 09, 2018 at 16:33 UTC
The cow says, "Mooooooooooo…" :P `use strictures; use XML::LibXML; my $doc = XML::LibXML->load_xml( IO => \*DATA ); my $text = [ $doc->findnodes('/Build-Doc/Build/text()[1]') ]->[0]; my $value = $text->data; $value =~ s/text/TACOS/; $text->setData($value); print $doc; __END__ <Build-Doc> <Build> text.mak <Targets>all</Targets> <Nmake></Nmake> </Build> </Build-Doc>` [download] You can work directly with text as XML nodes. Just find the right xpath in your case to it or, if necessary, to iterate over the text items (my example just grabs the first one and puts it in a scalar instead of an array of found nodes). Update: s/list/array/ + missing article.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Parsing and manipulating XML by hoppfrosch (Scribe) on Apr 11, 2018 at 08:07 UTC
Great - exactly what I was looking for! Thanks for your help - greatly appreciated	[reply]
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Re: Parsing and manipulating XML by hippo (Archbishop) on Apr 09, 2018 at 08:27 UTC
Here's an SSCCE: use strict; use warnings; use Test::More tests => 2; use XML::LibXML; my $doc = <<EOT; <Build-Doc> <Build> text.mak <Targets>all</Targets> <Nmake></Nmake> </Build> </Build-Doc> EOT my $parser = XML::LibXML->new(); my $dom = $parser->load_xml (string => $doc); my @str; push @str, $dom->toString; my $content = $dom->getElementsByTagName ('Build')->pop->firstChild->t +extContent; like ($content, qr/^\s+text.mak\s+$/, 'Text matches'); push @str, $dom->toString; is ($str[0], $str[1], 'DOM untouched'); [download] Not the most elegant, perhaps, but shows one approach.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Parsing and manipulating XML by Corion (Patriarch) on Apr 09, 2018 at 07:50 UTC
Maybe using the `no_blanks => 1` option when constructing your parser already is enough? This will make `libxml` not parse the (considered significant by XML) whitespace between nodes.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Parsing and manipulating XML by Anonymous Monk on Apr 09, 2018 at 08:59 UTC
text() is xpath for text nodes, ie not tags/elements	[reply]
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