in reply to Parsing an XML file with an undefined value

Your defined test doesn't work because it's $entry->getElementsByTagName('test4')->item(0) that's returning undef and you're then trying to call getFirstChild on that You need to check that this value is actually present before using it as an object.

Another alternative might be to look at something which supports XPath (e.g. XML::Twig) and come up with an XPath expression which will return just the elements of interest (if they're not there, you'll get nothing back rather than having to test for defined-ness of return values at multiple levels).

The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Parsing an XML file with an undefined value
by ravishi (Acolyte) on Nov 12, 2008 at 19:11 UTC
    I tried your first suggestion and I was not successful. Here is what I tried: 
    if (defined $entry->getElementsByTagName('test 4')) {
    print "reached 1\n";
    if (defined $entry->getElementsByTagName('test 4')->item(0)) { 
        print "reached 2\n";
        if (defined $entry->getElementsByTagName('test 4')->item(0)->g
+etFirstChild ) { 
            print"reached 3\n";
            if (defined $entry->getElementsByTagName('test 4')->item(0
+)->getFirstChild->getNodeValue ) { 
                print"reached 4\n";
                $test4 = $entry->getElementsByTagName('test4')->item(0
+)->getFirstChild->getNodeValue;
            }
        }
    }
}

    [download]
    It only gets past the first if statement. The if (defined $entry->getElementsByTagName('test 4')->item(0)) never passes. Am I doing something wrong?
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom