Re: Parse XML into CSV Files

I haven taken a look at the code and the XML document and tried to run it. I see many points for improvements, so many that I don't quite know where to start;)

Let's start by adding:
```
use strict; 
use warnings;
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```
at the top of the file. This can help you catch common mistakes, unsafe programming constructs etc.
Next think about the variable you want to use and declare them with "my" for example
```
my $xml = "e:\cars\input.xml";
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```
There are variables in your program which are never used.
You might want to use arrays instead of variables $image1...$image12 or $add, $add2...$add6.
use the 3 argument version of open function, see hereunder.

Test open, close and the print statements for failure, for example

open (FILENAME,">", $add3); or die "Can't open $add3 $!";
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The sample XML file you provided is not well-formed. Apart from that some of the tag names, e.g. the <Images> construct looks a bit strange, i.e. the <Image_1> to <Image_11> tags.

While your approach should work I am going to suggest a different approach all together. XML to CSV sounds like a standard application of XSLT to me. See Sal Mangano's XSLT Cookbook, it has a recipe for transforming XML into delimited data. There are modules on CPAN to do XSLT processing.

HTH
Harry

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Re^2: Parse XML into CSV Files by dmsparts (Sexton) on Jul 21, 2009 at 14:52 UTC
Thanks for the Help, I have no control over the XML. it is exported from a vehicle management program in order to put the details of vehicles onto a website. I have generated a couple of variables to use later on in the script, once the Vehicle processing has happened. Do i have to use the "my" before variables, i have not in the past and things seemed to work, however i have seen some scripts that do use it I will have a look at the XSLT, but i might have found the answer to my problem in another post on here. just need to work out what to do if the XML field is Blank. Cheers	[reply]
Re^3: Parse XML into CSV Files by dHarry (Abbot) on Jul 21, 2009 at 15:57 UTC
Do i have to use the "my" before variables No it's not mandatory, but it often makes sense to do so, i.e. explicitly declare variables that you want to use and give them a specific scope. See perldoc for documentation. Using `strict` and `warnings` is also not mandatory but using them in combination with `my` would for example have given you the information that some of the variables are never used.	[reply] [d/l] [select]