Re: XML::Simple - Make arrays out of class attribute

XML is a parser. It returns what is. If you want to perform transformations, you'll have to do them yourself.

use Data::Dumper;

my $parent = {
   div => [
      { class => 'A', content => '1' },
      { class => 'A', content => '2' },
      { class => 'A', content => '3' },
      { class => 'B', content => '4' },
      { class => 'B', content => '5' },
      { class => 'B', content => '6' },
   ],
};

my $grouped = {};
for ( @{ $parent->{div} } ) {
   my $class = delete $_->{class};
   push @{ $grouped->{$class} }, $_;
}
$parent->{div} = $grouped;

print(Dumper($parent));
[download]

By the way, the need to perform such transformations could indicate that your XML's schema incorrectly represents your data.

Comment on Re: XML::Simple - Make arrays out of class attribute Download Code

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Re^2: XML::Simple - Make arrays out of class attribute by juster (Friar) on Sep 14, 2008 at 22:07 UTC
OOPS After posting this i realized it clobbers the duplicates, which I didnt see at first. This is possible with the KeyAttr option: `#!/usr/bin/perl use Data::Dumper; use XML::Simple; use strict; use warnings; my $filename = shift or die "Usage: decode <filename>\n"; # dies on its own on error my $xmldata = XMLin($filename, KeyAttr => { 'div' => 'class' }); print Dumper $xmldata; __END__` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: XML::Simple - Make arrays out of class attribute by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 14, 2008 at 22:13 UTC
Your code doesn't work. It deletes 4 of the 6 elements.	[reply]
Re^2: XML::Simple - Make arrays out of class attribute by mscharrer (Hermit) on Sep 14, 2008 at 20:10 UTC
Thanks ikegami for your answer. I was trying to avoid doing the transformation by myself. There are already a lot of XML::Simple options which change the structure of the returned hash, i.e. do some form of transformations, so I thought there might be one for this case also. For example if the class would be unique for every div the 'KeyAttr' options would do exactly what I want. You are right that the XML code doesn't represent the data correctly. That's because it's XHTML of a webpage where I don't have any influence. It was written for display by a web browser not as a XML database. Thanks for your code. I starting to think that I will need it.	[reply]