I'm trying to wrap my ahead around an XML config file I'm trying to implement, more for learning than anything else. I find that a lot of the scripts I write (Perl, Bash, etc.) all start with the same 8-10 variables being defined at the top. Change one directory/IP/user, and you have to hunt for all the scripts which will now break. So, I thought what if I made an XML file and coded the scripts to pull from the file. If something changes, just change the XML! Maybe I'm building a bird house with a chainsaw, but I wanted to try.

Then I thought "well, I can add xxx and yyy to it too!" Maybe that was a mistake. ;)

XML config example: 
<Config>
  <Variableconfig>
      <Variable>
        <Name>NAME</Name>
        <Value>somevalue</Value>
      </Variable>
      ...
  </variableconfig>
  <ServerConfig>
     <Server>
        <Name>blue</Name>
        <IP>xxx.xxx.xxx.xx</IP>
        <IP>xxx.xxx.xxx.xx</IP>
        <FQDN>blue.some.domain</FQDN>
     </Server>
     ...
  </ServerConfig>
</Config>

[download]

So, I got the XML file done and slurped it in with XML::Simple using forcearray and Dumped it with data dumper. What I have are hashes of arrays of hashes etc.,etc. I can access elements with $xml->{yadda}[0]->{yadda}[0], but that seemed awfully painful.


So, I thought I'd give XML::LibXML a shot. This seemed a little more straight forward, although there's no visible data structure created that I could tell (I'm a visual type). I could get the file in, but couldn't do something like "find the element with the name 'Name'". I was trying various functions of LibXML (getAttributes, etc.) trying to walk the tree with no luck.


I guess to end this book, is there someone who could give me an example of "find the elements labeled 'Server' and pull out all FQDNs" using XML::LibXML or XML::Simple for that matter? Or suggest a better/different way of doing all this?


Sorry for the long read... :)

In reply to XML for Dummies by kevlinux

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