in reply to Re: use XML::DOM - what to do with empty tags?
in thread use XML::DOM - what to do with empty tags?

Thanks, That makes a lot of sense. I am still getting the error: 
Can't call method "getData" on an undefined value at parse_xml.pl line
+ 87.

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New code: 
my $Long = $contact->getElementsByTagName( "Longitude" );
my $long = $Long->item(0)->getChildAtIndex(0)->getData();

# declare lexical variable *outside the scope of the eval*
my $BusUrl;

# trap potential error
eval {
   $BusUrl = $contact->getElementsByTagName( "BusinessUrl" );
};

# check if tag retrieval failed
if($@) {
   # assign an empty (but defined) string
   #$BusUrl = '';
}

$bus_url = $BusUrl->item(0)->getChildAtIndex(0)->getData(); # line 87

# change phone number format

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: use XML::DOM - what to do with empty tags?
by EvanK (Chaplain) on Jan 03, 2007 at 16:57 UTC
    ah, the example code I provided just assigns an empty string to $BusUrl, which you later use as an object (my bad). so really, what you'd want to do is something like this: 
    if($@) {
  # assign an empty (but defined) string to $bus_url
  $bus_url = '';
}
else {
  # assign tag contents to $bus_url
  $bus_url = $BusUrl->item(0)->getChildAtIndex(0)->getData(); 
}

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     what you really want to do is follow mirod's advice and use the hasChildNodes method (note that he uses a much more flexible implementation than the following): 
    my $BusUrl = $contact->getElementsByTagName( "BusinessUrl" );

# check if tag is defined and has children
if (defined $BusUrl && $BusUrl->hasChildNodes) {
  $bus_url = $BusUrl->item( 0 )->getChildAtIndex( 0 )->getData();
}
# otherwise assign an empty string
else {
  $bus_url = '';
}

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