The structure is a hashref that contains a single member with key "items" which consists of an arrayref that contains two hashrefs. So you have to dereference the arrayref to get its members something like this: 
for my $item( @{$inventors_object->{items}} ){
    print $item->{name} . "\n";
};

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To change the data: 
$inventors_object->{items}->[0}->{name} = 'new name';

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To turn it back into a JSON string: 
my $new_json = objToJson( $inventors_object );

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update here is your mistake: 
@inventors_array = $inventors_obj->{"items"};

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You are trying to turn an arrayref into an array without dereferencing it. Instead you want: 
@inventors_array = @{ $inventors_obj->{"items"} };

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In reply to Re: JSON and Perl Objects - How to access data? by jZed
in thread JSON and Perl Objects - How to access data? by harryhalpin

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