I started with a couple other XML packages way back when and was never happy. I accidentally discovered LibXML and after fighting through the docs (they actually are pretty good, you just have to read them all front to back and then use them like a function index) I've never been happier. So stick it out, as it were. My Xpath sucks but here's something anyway.

First, there's a good basic tutorial here: Xpath basics. I use that site over and over because their tutorials are straightforward and well organized even when they aren't the deepest/best. Then, this is what I tried just to play around. 

use XML::LibXML;

my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();

my $tree = $parser->parse_fh(*DATA);
my $root = $tree->getDocumentElement;

for my $node ( $root->findnodes("//Device/*/status/text()") )
{
    print $node->nodeValue, $/;
}
# print $root->serialize(1);

__DATA__
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>

<SymCLI_ML>
  <Symmetrix>
    <Symm_Info>
      <symid>000290101935</symid>
    </Symm_Info>
    <Device>
      <Dev_Info>
        <pd_name>Not Visible</pd_name>
        <dev_name>0040</dev_name>
# ...

[download]

To iterate through all the Device childNodes, this sort of thing should be pretty fast. I think there is a native Xpath for getting child nodes too.

for my $node ( $root->findnodes("//Device/*") )
{
    print $node->nodeName, $/;
}

[download]

You could certainly cook up a hash of the nodeNames/Xpath to "your key names" you want and run your Xpath queries with it so that your solution would (human) scale as it would be little more than a configuration based filter.

(update: corrected an extra word and code comment)

In reply to Re: Any help available for a newbie to XML::LibXML? by Your Mother
in thread Any help available for a newbie to XML::LibXML? by wardy3

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