silvertip257 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have decided to use LibXML to parse XML, but have had difficulty getting any output from CData nodes. Below is a small test case that I tried to use to get something working. So far I've had no luck. Any help is welcome - but I want come to a solution using LibXML (not other parsers).

Thanks, Mike

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <child>
    <![CDATA[
      Here's a bunch of fun text that I want to get a substring out of
+.
    ]]>
  </child>
</root>

[download]
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use XML::LibXML;

my $in = "testcd.xml";

my $parser = XML::LibXML->new;
my $doc = $parser->parse_file( $in ) or die("Cannot parse input file")
+;

my $root = $doc->documentElement();

#my $val = ($root->getElementsByTagName("child"))[0]->nodeValue;
my @ch = $root->getElementsByTagName("child");

my $val = $ch[0]->firstChild->nodeType;
print $val;

my $cdata =
XML::LibXML::CDATASection->new(($root->getElementsByTagName("child"))[
+0]->nodeV$

$cdata = $cdata->data;

print $cdata;

exit 0;

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Parsing CData nodes with LibXML
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Apr 07, 2010 at 04:42 UTC

    Don't forget about keep_blanks. It'll toss the empties if turned off.

    use XML::LibXML;

my $parser = XML::LibXML->new;
$parser->keep_blanks(0);

my $doc = $parser->parse_string(<<'__XML__');
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <child>
    <![CDATA[
      Here's a bunch of fun text that I want to get a substring out
  of.
    ]]>
  </child>
</root>
__XML__

print $doc->getDocumentElement->firstChild->textContent, $/;

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[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Parsing CData nodes with LibXML
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 07, 2010 at 03:32 UTC
    Don't forget about the examples and tests :)http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-LibXML/MANIFEST 
    #!/usr/bin/perl --

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::LibXML;

Main(@ARGV);
exit(0);

sub Main {
  my $doc = XML::LibXML->load_xml( string => <<'__XML__');
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <child>
    <![CDATA[
      Here's a bunch of fun text that I want to get a substring out of
+.
    ]]>
  </child>
</root>
__XML__

  for my $nod ( $doc->findnodes('/root/child/text()') ) {
    print "$nod\n", $nod->string_value, "\n-----\n";
  }

} ## end sub Main

__END__
XML::LibXML::Text=SCALAR(0xa12c14)


-----
XML::LibXML::CDATASection=SCALAR(0xa983c4)

      Here's a bunch of fun text that I want to get a substring out of
+.

-----
XML::LibXML::Text=SCALAR(0x9d75d4)


-----

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

      Isn't this funny...I'm responding to myself and solving my problem. I hope that this information will show up on search engines to save others the time that this parser behavior cost me.

      I have found out that the actual CData string that I want is stored in the second child node of my parent child element.

      Here's a modified snippet from what I found.

      my @ch = $root->getElementsByTagName("child");

my $type = $ch[0]->nodeType;
my $val = $ch[0]->firstChild->nodeValue;
my $type2 = ($ch[0]->childNodes)[1]->nodeType;
my $val2 = ($ch[0]->childNodes)[1]->nodeValue;
print $type."\n";
print $val."\n";
print $type2."\n";
print $val2."\n";
print "val Length = ".length($val)."\n";

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[d/l]
        I thought that was obvious from my example :D and besides, everyone knows significant white-space is significant :)
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