in reply to Re^8: Help with JSON Module
in thread Help with JSON Module

Please read References Quick Reference perlreftut. The opening bracket tells you that it's a hash reference.

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Re^10: Help with JSON Module
by foggy3657 (Novice) on Sep 08, 2012 at 10:48 UTC

    Thank you for your patience, but I'm just not understanding what I'm reading.

      The output of Data::Dumper is source code that would, when run through Perl, recreate the same data structure.

      As a series of exercises to familiarize yourself with walking down such a data structure, maybe the following helps you:

      1. What does print "$result" output, and what does that mean?
      2. Print the value of the TotalPageCount entry of $result .
      3. Assign the content of $result to a hash, %ex1, so that the (comma separated) output of keys %ex1 is (not necessarily in that order) StatusCode, Products, TotalProductCount, PageNumber, TotalPageCount, StatusInfo, PageProductCount . Hint: References Quick Reference
      4. What does print "$result->{Products}" output, and what does that mean? Why did the authors choose Products instead of Product as key name?
      5. Assign the content of $result->{Products} to an array, @ex2. Compare the output of print Dumper @ex2 and print Dumper \@ex2.
      6. Find a query that returns more than one product. Compare the output of your programs when run with that query.
      7. Descending through a data structure can be chained. Explain the following expressions: $result->{Products}->[0] and $result->{Products}->[0]->{ImagePath}

        I'll give them a go. Thank you.