Gossamer Forum: General: Perl Programming: Re: [Watts] XML::Parser: Edit Log

I prefer XML::Simple.

http://search.cpan.org/~grantm/XML-Simple-2.14/lib/XML/Simple.pm

Example (from my PingServices plugin):

Code:
<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<methodCall> 
  <methodName>pingback.ping</methodName> 
  <params> 
    <param> 
      <value><string>http://www.mysite.com/blog/article.html</string></value> 
    </param> 
    <param> 
      <value><string>http://www.yoursite.com/blog/article.html</string></value> 
    </param> 
  </params> 
</methodCall>

Converted to Perl data structure with:

Code:
sub pingback_req_parse 
{ 
  my $xml  = $IN->post_data(); 
  my $data = xml_to_hash($xml); 

  return (ref $data eq 'HASH') 
    ? { 
        method => $data->{methodName}, 
        from   => $data->{params}->{param}->[0]->{value}->{string}, 
        to     => $data->{params}->{param}->[1]->{value}->{string}
      } 
    : undef; 
} 

sub xml_to_hash 
{ 
  my $xml =  shift; 
     $xml =~ s/^([^<]*)</</; #leading spaces before first tag breaks XML. remove them! 

  my $data = eval { XML::Simple::XMLin($xml) };     #eval to failsafe on bad input 

  return (ref $data eq 'HASH') ? $data : undef; 
}

Note that there is an XML::RPC module I could have used for the above example, but XML::Simple is more portable as it lets me parse XML RPC calls as well as any other XML-like structure, such as Trackback RDF data from blogs, into a a more-or-less literal translation into a nested hash, where each XML tag or attribute is a hash key.

Philip
------------------
Limecat is not pleased.

General: Perl Programming: Re: [Watts] XML::Parser: Edit Log

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