Hi Monks,

I want to contribute with this Perlita.

Some days ago I was faced with a system where users are created manually because it lacks a general user import facility. The system offers a specific user export for backup, portability or migration purposes. The output of the export is a XML file which is understood by an associated propietary import process. The XML output file is just a collection of user sections. Based on such a section, I created a XML template and applied on it variable substitution for specific fields using XML::Simple. In this way I was able to translate an external list of users into the required XML format for import. The resulting XML could be written to a file and then imported into the system saving a lot of time in the user creation. (In the code shown, I print the result trough an Emacs buffer, so no file writing code needed.)

Beside the magic simplification, connecting XMLout with XMLin was also an interesting data structure exercise using Data::Dumper.

use strict;
require XML::Simple;

my @usr_list = (
      q{u00157:STAF:Mickey:Request:},
      q{u14318:STAF:Sean:Request:},
      q{u10044:ENF:Carol:Response:},
      q{u11162:STAF:Sarah:User:},
      q{u03763:ENF:Laura:Response:},
      q{u12093:RES:Tim:Request:},
      q{u12091:RES:Maria:Request:},
      q{u14380:RES:Tom:Request:},
    );

my ($s1, $s2, $s3, $s4);
my $xs = XML::Simple->new();

print "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n<foo version=\"4.2\
+">\n";
foreach (@usr_list) {
  ($s1, $s2, $s3, $s4) = split ":";
  print $xs->XMLout($xs->XMLin("userxml.tmp",
                   ForceArray => 1,
                   KeepRoot => 1,
                   Variables => {s1 => $s1,
                         s2 => $s2,
                         s3 => $s3,
                         s4 => $s4,
                   }
            ),
            RootName => undef,
      );
}
print "</foo>\n";
[download]

Here the XML template "userxml.tmp":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<user>
  <type>normal</type>
  <deleted>false</deleted>
  <name>${s1}</name>
  <user-attribute>
    <name>Description</name>
    <protected>false</protected>
    <value>${s2}</value>
    <group>
      <name>Users</name>
    </group>
  </user-attribute>
  <user-attribute>
    <name>E-mail</name>
    <protected>false</protected>
    <group>
      <name>Users</name>
    </group>
  </user-attribute>
  <user-attribute>
    <name>Name</name>
    <protected>false</protected>
    <value>${s3}</value>
    <group>
      <name>Users</name>
    </group>
  </user-attribute>
  <user-attribute>
    <name>User Given Name</name>
    <protected>false</protected>
    <value>${s3}</value>
    <group>
      <name>Users</name>
    </group>
  </user-attribute>
  <group-membership>
    <name>${s4}</name>
  </group-membership>
  <group-membership>
    <name>Users</name>
  </group-membership>
</user>
[download]

Happy hacking!