No such pseudo-hash field

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

Hi, Still fumbling around trying to retrieve values from, for me, complicated data structures

This is what Dumper shows (I’ve both trimmed and anonymoused the data, but hopefully have not screwed the structure)

bless( {
                 'allowedHostnames' => [
                                       'node1',
                                       'node2'
                                     ],
                 'customerName' => 'GarbageA',
                 'expirationDate' => '2021-08-15T22:59:59.000Z',
                 'errorMessage' => undef,
                 'properties' => [
                                 bless( {
                                          'value' => '42000',
                                          'name' => 'maxEngines'
                                        }, 'Property' ), 
                                 bless( {
                                          'value' => '',
                                          'name' => 'brokerLeases'
                                        }, 'Property' ),
                                 bless( {
                                          'value' => '',
                                          'name' => 'amazonDevPay'
                                        }, 'Property' ),
                                 bless( {
                                          'value' => GarbageD',
                                          'name' => 'customer_ID'
                                        }, 'Property' ),
                                 bless( {
                                          'value' => ' GarbageE',
                                          'name' => 'LicenseID'
                                        }, 'Property' )
                               ]
               }, 'LicenseInfo' )
[download]

I can successfully get “GarbageA” for customerName, but cannot get 42000 for maxEngines – the error returned is “No such pseudo-hash field maxEngines"

This is the code I am using

my $soap2 = SOAP::Lite->uri( $_[1] )->proxy( $_[2] )->getLicenseInfo()
+;

   my @licenseInfos = $soap2->result ;
   for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < @licenseInfos ; $i++ ) {
        my $license = $licenseInfos[$i];

         print Dumper($license);

         my $licensedCustomer = $license->{'customerName'};
         print "$licensedCustomer\n";

         my $maxEngine = $license->{'properties'}->{'maxEngines'};
         print "$maxEngine\n";

        }
[download]

Any help much appreciated. Regards, Nigel

Comment on No such pseudo-hash field Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: No such pseudo-hash field by Eliya (Vicar) on Mar 28, 2011 at 11:10 UTC
No such pseudo-hash field This is the error you typically get when you incorrectly access an array as a hash, and have an old Perl that still does support pseudo hashes (such as 5.8.x). In your specific case, your `$license->{'properties'}` is an arrayref, but you treat it as a hashref. Something like this should work better `my $maxEngine; my $props = $license->{'properties'}; for my $p (@$props) { if ($p->{name} eq "maxEngines") { $maxEngine = $p->{value}; last; } }` [download] Or, if you know for sure that "maxEngines" always is the first array field, you can say `my $maxEngine = $license->{properties}[0]{value};` [download] to retrieve the 42000.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: No such pseudo-hash field by ELISHEVA (Prior) on Mar 28, 2011 at 11:40 UTC
When you are trying to figure out how to access a part of a complex data structure, it is important to pay attention to each level of curly brace `{` and square bracket `[`. If you look carefully you should see a square brace next to `{properties}`. That means that hash member is storing an array reference. Within the array are a series of `{...}`. Each of those are array elements. Since the array element with the property name 'maxEngines' is in the first array element, you would access its associated value like this: `$license->{properties}->[0]->{value}`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: No such pseudo-hash field by moritz (Cardinal) on Mar 28, 2011 at 12:49 UTC
I would hope that there are some accessor methods that you can use, instead of poking in the object's internals. Perl 6 - second systems done right	[reply]
Re: No such pseudo-hash field by theleftsock (Beadle) on Mar 28, 2011 at 11:22 UTC
because the keys are actually 'name' and 'value'. the values are '42000' and 'maxengines'. you need more like this to get those values back. I did not load your data and test it. Hope that helps. `my $maxEngine_name = $license->{'properties'}->{'name'}; my $maxEngine_value = $license->{'properties'}->{'value'};` [download] Have a nice day.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: No such pseudo-hash field by Eliya (Vicar) on Mar 28, 2011 at 11:41 UTC
This would still produce ~~"No such pseudo-hash field"~~ "Pseudo-hashes are deprecated" / "Argument "maxEngines" isn't numeric in hash element" / "Bad index while coercing array into hash" (with warnings on), because `$license->{'properties'}` is an arrayref ⁽¹⁾. Rather, it should be `my $maxEngine_name = $license->{'properties'}->[0]->{'name'}; my $maxEngine_value = $license->{'properties'}->[0]->{'value'};` [download] (presuming "maxEngines" corresponds to the first entry in the array) ___ ⁽¹⁾ the values which are being looked up internally via the "index hash" (first array elem) - i.e. `"maxEngines"` and `"42000"` here - are not useful as indices for the array/pseudo hash.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: No such pseudo-hash field by nleach (Novice) on Mar 28, 2011 at 11:54 UTC
Many thanks for both quick answers. Eliya’s first suggestion worked great. Theleftsock, I can see where your coming from, but that syntax did not work, it returned “Bad index while coercing array into hash	[reply]
Re: No such pseudo-hash field by Anonymous Monk on Mar 29, 2011 at 14:39 UTC
In the unlikely event that no useful accessors are defined in the LicenseInfo package, then you could directly access the properties like so by mapping the array into a hash or a hashref (chosen in this case to match the style of the licenseinfo) `foreach my $license (@licenseInfos) { my $licenseProperties = {map {$_->{name} => $_->{value}} @{$licens +e->{properties}}}; print $license->{customerName}, "\n"; print $licenseProperties->{maxEngines}, "\n"; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]