XML::Struct(3pm)

Usage

    use XML::Struct qw(readXML writeXML simpleXML);
    my $xml = readXML( "input.xml" );
    # [ root => { xmlns => 'http://example.org/' }, [ '!', [ x => {}, [42] ] ] ]
    my $doc = writeXML( $xml );
    # <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    # <root xmlns="http://example.org/">!<x>42</x></root>
    my $simple = simpleXML( $xml, root => 'record' );
    # { record => { xmlns => 'http://example.org/', x => 42 } }

Overview

XML::Struct implements a mapping between XML and Perl data structures. By default, the mapping preserves element order, so it also suits for "document-oriented" XML. In short, an XML element is represented as array reference with three parts:

   [ $name => \%attributes, \@children ]

This data structure corresponds to the abstract data model of MicroXML <http://www.w3.org/community/microxml/>, a simplified subset of XML.

If your XML documents don't contain relevant attributes, you can also choose to map to this format:

   [ $name => \@children ]   # element without attributes
   [ $name ]                 # empty tag without attributes

Both parsing (with XML::Struct::Reader or function "readXML") and serializing (with XML::Struct::Writer or function "writeXML") are fully based on XML::LibXML, so performance is better than XML::Simple and similar to XML::LibXML::Simple.

Modules

XML::Struct::Reader: Parse XML as stream into XML data structures.

XML::Struct::Writer: Write XML data structures to XML streams for serializing, SAX processing, or creating a DOM object.

XML::Struct::Writer::Stream: Simplified SAX handler for XML serialization.

XML::Struct::Simple: Transform XML data structure into simple form.

Functions

The following functions are exported on request:

readXML( $source [, %options ] )

Read an XML document with XML::Struct::Reader. The type of source (string, filename, URL, IO Handle...) is detected automatically. See XML::Struct::Reader for options. Options not known to XML::Struct::Reader are passed to XML::LibXML::Reader.

writeXML( $xml [, %options ] )

Write an XML document/element with XML::Struct::Writer. See XML::Struct::Writer for options.

simpleXML( $element [, %options ] )

Transform an XML document/element into simple key-value format as known from XML::Simple. See XML::Struct::Simple for options.

removeXMLAttr( $element )

Transform XML structure with attributes to XML structure without attributes. The function does not modify the passed element but creates a modified copy.

this function is deprecated and will be removed in a future release!

Examples

To give an example, with XML::Struct::Reader, this XML document:

    <root>
      <foo>text</foo>
      <bar key="value">
        text
        <doz/>
      </bar>
    </root>

is transformed to this structure:

    [
      "root", { }, [
        [ "foo", { }, "text" ],
        [ "bar", { key => "value" }, [
          "text", 
          [ "doz", { }, [ ] ]
        ] 
      ]
    ]

This module also supports a simple key-value (aka "data-oriented") format, as used by XML::Simple. With option "simple" (or function "simpleXML") the document given above would be transformed to this structure:

    {
        foo => "text",
        bar => {
            key => "value",
            doz => {}
        }
    }

Copyright and license

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

Releases

6 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 2 times.