Re^5: Parsing SOAP::Lite results

You can use ref to do that.

Here's a modification of my earlier script to show this. For illustration purposes, I've made minor changes to the locationName values so you can see which toybox is being referred to.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $getToysResults = {
  'Toys' => bless( {
           'Toy' => [
              bless( {
               'ToyLocations' => bless( {
                       'ToyLocation' => {
                                        'toyQuantity' => '2',
                                        'locationName' => 'HASH:toybox
+'
                                        }   
                         }, 'ArrayOfToyLocation' ),
               'color' => 'brown',
               'toyName' => 'bear',
               'size' => 'large'
               }, 'Stuffed' ),
          bless( {
               'ToyLocations' => bless( {
                       'ToyLocation' => [
                                        {   
                                        'toyQuantity' => '1',
                                        'locationName' => 'ARRAY:toybo
+x'
                                        },  
                                        {   
                                        'toyQuantity' => '4',
                                        'locationName' => 'ARRAY:shelf
+'
                                        }   
                                        ]   
                         }, 'ArrayOfToyLocation' ),
               'color' => 'none',
               'toyName' => 'Sorry',
               'size' => 'medium'
               }, 'Board' )
              ]
        }, 'ArrayOfToy' )
     };

foreach my $e (@{$getToysResults->{Toys}{Toy}}) {
    my $location_ref = $e->{ToyLocations}{ToyLocation};
    my $location_array_ref
        = ref($location_ref) eq 'ARRAY' ? $location_ref : [ $location_
+ref ];
    
    for my $location_array_hash_ref (@$location_array_ref) {
        print $location_array_hash_ref->{locationName}, "\n";
    }
}
[download]

Output:

$ pm_parse_soap_ref.pl
HASH:toybox
ARRAY:toybox
ARRAY:shelf
[download]

-- Ken

Comment on Re^5: Parsing SOAP::Lite results Select or Download Code

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Re^6: Parsing SOAP::Lite results by Roboz (Novice) on Sep 28, 2012 at 13:44 UTC
That worked great. I had tried some `if (ref($location_ref) eq 'ARRAY') {...} elsif (ref($location_ref) eq 'HASH') {...}` and just changed the @$ to a %$ and was getting a 'Can't use string ... strict refs' error. Glad you returned with the better way to do it. Can you tell me what's happening here? `my $location_array_ref = ref($location_ref) eq 'ARRAY' ? $location_ref : [ $location_ +ref ];` [download] Thank you very much!	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^7: Parsing SOAP::Lite results by kcott (Archbishop) on Sep 28, 2012 at 15:13 UTC
That's the Conditional Operator. You'll often see it referred to as the ternary operator (actually, that's what I usually call it). That single statement could be written as: `my $location_array_ref; if (ref($location_ref) eq 'ARRAY') { $location_array_ref = $location_ref; } else { $location_array_ref = [ $location_ref ]; }` [download] There's an assumption here that if it's not an arrayref, it will be a hashref. That seemed like a reasonable assumption to me; especially for a short script intended to demonstrate a technique. Furthermore, trying to guess what other data types you might be working with would simply be other assumptions. The basic syntax for this operator is: `expression1 ? expression2 : expression3` [download] There's nothing to say how complex any of those expressions might be; in fact, any of them could include another ternary operator. Putting all that together, here's an example of far more robust code that allows arrayrefs, hashrefs, scalarrefs and non-reference scalar values with anything else generating an error. foreach my $e (@{$getToysResults->{Toys}{Toy}}) { my $location_ref = $e->{ToyLocations}{ToyLocation}; my $ref_type = ref $location_ref; my $location_array_ref = $ref_type eq 'ARRAY' ? $location_ref : $ref_type eq 'HASH' ? [ $location_ref ] : $ref_type eq 'SCALAR' ? [ { locationName => $$location_ref } + ] : $ref_type eq '' ? [ { locationName => $location_ref } +] : undef; die 'Data corrupt' unless defined $location_array_ref; for my $location_array_hash_ref (@$location_array_ref) { print $location_array_hash_ref->{locationName}, "\n"; } } [download] If you want to play around with this, here's the code I used for my tests and the output. Note that I changed `die` to `warn` to see all conditions being exercised in a single run. Read more... (4 kB) -- Ken	[reply] [d/l] [select]