Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple

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

Hi,
I am trying to loop through nested repeated elements in my config file but I am unable to find the number of nested elements:
Sample XML File:

<opt>
  <person firstname="Joe" lastname="Smith">
     <email>joe@smith.com</email>
     <email>jsmith@yahoo.com</email>
  </person>
  <person firstname="Bob" lastname="Smith">
     <email>bob@smith.com</email>
  </person>
</opt>
[download]

Perl Code:

use XML::Simple;
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
my $config = XMLin("testFile.xml",forcearray => ['person','email']);
my @persons = $config->{person};
print "Size:".@persons;
[download]

On running I always get the size as 1. I think the way I am trying to get the size is wrong because in order to get the person blocks I need to do $config->{person}->[0] etc. instead of $config->{person}[0]. I admit I have not used hashes earlier but I did try keys function on $config->{person} which gives "Type of arg 1 to keys must be hash (not hash element)" error. Could anyone please tell me the right way to loop through the elements?
Regards,
Ranjan

Comment on Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple Select or Download Code

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Re: Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 13, 2006 at 06:50 UTC
`$config->{person}` returns a reference to an array, not an array. `my $persons = $config->{person}; print "Size:".@$persons;` [download] Hashes values can't be arrays, only scalars. References are scalars, so references to arrays are valid hash values.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple by ranjan_jajodia (Monk) on Dec 13, 2006 at 07:17 UTC
Thanks ikegami for the explanation. I am off to exploring more on the same. Regards, Ranjan	[reply]
Re: Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple by pemungkah (Priest) on Dec 13, 2006 at 07:02 UTC
Well, let's do what we should do when we have a data structure we don't understand: look at it in the debugger. $ perl -d xml_sample.pl Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.28 Editor support available. Enter h or `h h' for help, or `man perldebug' for more help. main::(xml_sample.pl:5): my $config = XMLin("testFile.xml",forc +earray => ['person','email']); + DB<1> l 5==> my $config = XMLin("testFile.xml",forcearray => ['person','ema +il']); 6: my @persons = $config->{person}; 7: print "Size:".@persons; DB<1> c 6 # run continuously to line 6 main::(xml_sample.pl:6): my @persons = $config->{person}; DB<2> x $config 0 HASH(0x1988e88) 'person' => ARRAY(0x19acb00) 0 HASH(0x1988f30) 'email' => ARRAY(0x19acba8) 0 'joe@smith.com' 1 'jsmith@yahoo.com' 'firstname' => 'Joe' 'lastname' => 'Smith' 1 HASH(0x198a0cc) 'email' => ARRAY(0x19acab8) 0 'bob@smith.com' 'firstname' => 'Bob' 'lastname' => 'Smith' DB<3> q $ [download] So we can see that the value of `$config->{person}` is actually a reference to an array, not an array itself. You'll have to dereference it to get an actual array. Try `@{ $config->{person} }`. The elements in the array created by this expression will be the two references to the hashes containing references to arrays containing the email values.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple by ranjan_jajodia (Monk) on Dec 13, 2006 at 07:20 UTC
Thanks pemungkah for the explaining the way to solve this kind of problem. I was using DataDumper to see the contents but this way I can do more things while debugging. Regards, Ranjan	[reply]
Re^3: Looping through nested repeated elements using XML::Simple by pemungkah (Priest) on Dec 13, 2006 at 20:11 UTC
You're very welcome. One other thing: you can play around with expressions in the debugger as well. For instance, if you wanted to see what `@{ $config->{person} }` would give you, you could just enter `x @{ $config->{person} }` at the debugger prompt, and the debugger would happily dump it out for you.	[reply]