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

Hi Monks!

I am stuck here, I have a direcory with about 40 xml files, I need to parse these files all at once, or by a range from a select dropdown menu, I have the code to go to the direcory and search for the files I need. But on the next step is where I am having a problem, how to pass the range of files and use it with this line,

my $xp = XML::XPath->new(filename => $x_file);

Is it possible? How could I do that?
I got it to work with one file, but now that I have this much more files I am kind of lost.
I think I need to pass these files into an array or something, using a range between to first file till the last one selected, any help will be great!!!!
Thank you!!!

#!/perl/bin/perl

#use strict; #commented out for testing propose only
use CGI qw/:standard/;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use DBI;
use XML::XPath;
use XML::XPath::XMLParser;

my $q = new CGI;

print header();

my $transac = $q->param('transac');

my $get_file_from = $q->param('get_file_from');
my $get_file_to = $q->param('get_file_to');


if($transac eq "parse_now"){

&parse_now;

}else{

&main;

}

sub main{

print "Start Main:<br><br>";

print "
       <table border=\"1\" width=\"600\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding
+=\"0\">
        <tr><form name=\"xmlform\" action=\"get_node.pl\" method=\"GET
+\">
            <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"transac\" value=\"parse_now\
+">
            <td>Check  Policies from:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
            <td><div align=\"center\">
        <select name=\"get_file_from\">";
            
my $dir = '/xml';

    opendir(DIR, $dir) or die $!;

    while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {

        # We only want files
        next unless (-f "$dir/$file");

        # Use a regular expression to find files ending in .xml
        next unless ($file =~ m/\.xml$/);
        
        # change to the date format if needed
        $file=~/(.*?)_(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})_(.*?)/;
    my $year= $2;
    my $month= $3;
        my $day = $4;
        
        print "<option value=\"$file\">$file</option>";
    }

    closedir(DIR);
    #exit;

print "      </select>    
     </td>
     <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;to&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
     <td><div align=\"center\">
        <select name=\"get_file_to\">";
            
my $dir = '/xml';

    opendir(DIR, $dir) or die $!;

    while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {

        # We only want files
        next unless (-f "$dir/$file");

        # Use a regular expression to find files ending in .xml
        next unless ($file =~ m/\.xml$/);
        
        # change to the date format if needed later
        $file=~/(.*?)_(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})_(.*?)/;
    my $year= $2;
    my $month= $3;
        my $day = $4;
        
        print "<option value=\"$file\">$file</option>";
    }

    closedir(DIR);
    #exit;

print "      </select>
     
     </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>&nbsp;</td>
       <td>&nbsp;</td>
       <td>&nbsp;</td>
       <td align=\"right\"><input type=\"submit\" value=\"Send\"></td>
    </tr></div>
    </table></form>";

} # End Sub Main


sub parse_now{

# change to the date format if needed later
$get_file_from=~/(.*?)_(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})_(.*?)/;
my $year= $2;
my $month= $3;
my $day = $4;


my $x_file = "/xml/$get_file_from";

my $xp = XML::XPath->new(filename => $x_file);


# more stuff here ........

exit;


} #end sub parse now

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Range File Open
by stiller (Friar) on Mar 04, 2008 at 14:17 UTC
    If you have an array of files: 
    for my $x_file (@files){
   my $xp = XML::XPath->new(filename => $x_file);
   
   # continue as before   
}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      OK, but how can I pass the range of files to be open to this array?
[reply]

        You already have some code to scan through your directory and decide whether or not you want a file, so all you have to do is push the file into the array at the end of a similar loop. Something like the following:

            while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
        
        #decide whether or not this is a file the user wants
        ...

        push @files, $file;
    }

        [download]

        Then you can use stiller's loop to iterate through that list, opening each file for processing.

[reply]
[d/l]
        Edit: amarquis idea is better than the following, I didn't look through your code to notice what he saw....

        you could use

        my @files;
if (-d $x_file) {
   # $x_file is a directory, not a file
   @files = glob "$x_file/*xml";
}
elsif ($x_file =~ /xml$/ and -e $x_file){
   # $x_file is an xml-file, and we have access to it
   push @files, $x_file;
}
else {
   die("can't make sense out xml-directory or xml-file $x_file");
}

        [download]
        Or File::Glob, File::Find, ...
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Range File Open
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 04, 2008 at 15:37 UTC
    What about something like that:

    my $dir = '/xml';

my @all_files;

    opendir(DIR, $dir) or die $!; 
    while (my $file = readdir(DIR)) {
    next if ($file =~ m/^\./);
    next unless ($file =~ m/\.xml$/);
    push @all_files, $file; 
    }
    closedir(DIRHANDLE);    

#Get the range using a slice here, can be values coming from the dropd
+own menu";

my $from = "0";
my $to = "1";

my @new_all_files = @all_files[$from,$to];

my $open_this;
for my $x_file (@new_all_files){

...stuff

}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Range File Open
by Jenda (Abbot) on Mar 05, 2008 at 23:08 UTC 
    if($transac eq "parse_now"){

&parse_now;

}else{

    [download]

    Do NOT use &subroutine; unless you really do know what it does and really do need that behaviour! You don't and you don't. If you want to call a subroutine with no parameters use subroutine(); or just subroutine;. The & has a very special meaning there.

    print "
       <table border=\"1\" width=\"600\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding
+=\"0\">
        <tr><form name=\"xmlform\" action=\"get_node.pl\" method=\"GET
+\">
            <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"transac\" value=\"parse_now\
+">
            <td>Check  Policies from:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
            <td><div align=\"center\">
        <select name=\"get_file_from\">";

    [download]

    Isn't this a bit ... ugly? Things like this may be necessary in C, but definitely not in Perl. Use either the qq{} quote-like operator or heredocs: 

    print qq{
       <table border="1" width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
        <tr><form name="xmlform" action="get_node.pl" method="GET">
            <input type="hidden" name="transac" value="parse_now">
            <td>Check  Policies from:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
            <td><div align="center">
        <select name="get_file_from">};

#or

print <<"*END*";
       <table border="1" width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
        <tr><form name="xmlform" action="get_node.pl" method="GET">
            <input type="hidden" name="transac" value="parse_now">
            <td>Check  Policies from:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
            <td><div align="center">
        <select name="get_file_from">
*END*

    [download]

    Jenda
    Support Denmark!
    Defend the free world!

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

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