I have no idea if Slashdot has linked to the Perl.com XML articles in the past, however IIRC Slashdot content is provided by user submissions. So I guess I am partly to blame, since I have never submitted any of the Perl.com XML articles :)

I agree it is funny, that nobody else has done so in the past.

Cheers

Martin

Not a single blip on Slashdot.

Well someone must have heard your cry.... Perl XML on slashdot

where cLive ;-) promptly blasted XML in general, in favor of YAML::Syck

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

*sighs* That's the wrong blasting. XML and YAML don't solve the same problem. XML solves the problem of how to encode arbitrary data + metadata into a text format. YAML solves the problem of how to encode arbitrarily-nested data structures. AFAIK, YAML doesn't address the issue of metadata.

Now, YAML should be used in many places that XML is used. But, if you had to choose only one to use for every single arbitrary data (+metadata) need, that solution would be XML. I'd love to be proven wrong re: YAML's inability to handle arbitrary metadata, but I don't think I am.

---

My criteria for good software:

1. Does it work?
2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

(Regarding the article (also posted to the author with a little different wording).)
The code for the pet shop could be further shortened by using ForceArray => [dog, cat, hippo]. Not only would this make the structure returned by XMLin simpler, but it'd save the developer from having to unwrap the one item arrays. And would save some memory.

In case anyone is interested this is the implementation of the task (except for the ordering) using XML::Rules:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use XML::Rules;
use Date::Calc qw(Add_Delta_YM Decode_Date_EU Delta_Days Delta_YMD); u
+se Data::Dumper;

my @now = (localtime(time))[5, 4, 3];
$now[0] += 1900;  # Perl years start in 1900
$now[1]++;        # months are zero-based

my $parser = XML::Rules->new(
 rules => [
  price => sub { price => fixPrice( $_[1]->{_content}, 0.20 )},
  dob => sub {age => dob2age( $_[1]->{_content})},
  'name,owner' => 'content',
  'dog,cat,hippo' => sub {delete($_[1]->{_content}); $_[0] => $_[1]}, 
+ ],  style => 'filter', );

$parser->filterfile('pets.xml', \*STDOUT);

# ... and the functions defined in the article
[download]

With the ordering it's

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use XML::Rules;
use Date::Calc qw(Add_Delta_YM Decode_Date_EU Delta_Days Delta_YMD); u
+se Data::Dumper;

my @now = (localtime(time))[5, 4, 3];
$now[0] += 1900;  # Perl years start in 1900
$now[1]++;        # months are zero-based

my $parser = XML::Rules->new(
 rules => [
  price => sub { price => fixPrice( $_[1]->{_content}, 0.20 )},
  dob => sub {age => dob2age( $_[1]->{_content})},
  'name,owner' => 'content',
  '_default' => 'no content array',
  'pets' => sub {
    my ($tag, $attrs) = @_;
    delete($attrs->{_content});
    foreach my $kind (values %{$attrs}) {
     next unless ref($kind) eq 'ARRAY'; # just in case
     $kind = [sort {$a->{name} cmp $b->{name}} @$kind];
      # sort the animals of a kind by name
    };

    return $tag => $attrs;
  },
 ],
 style => 'filter',
 ident => ' ',
);

$parser->filterfile('pets.xml', \*STDOUT);

# ... and the functions (78 lines in total)
[download]

P.S.: You need XML::Rules 0.17 for the identation to work.