XML-Struct - Represent XML as data structure preserving element order
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 } }
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, 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.
-
Parse XML as stream into XML data structures.
-
Write XML data structures to XML streams for serializing, SAX processing, or creating a DOM object.
-
Simplified SAX handler for XML serialization.
-
Transform XML data structure into simple form.
The following functions are exported on request:
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.
Write an XML document/element with XML::Struct::Writer. See XML::Struct::Writer for options.
Transform an XML document/element into simple key-value format as known from XML::Simple. See XML::Struct::Simple for options.
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!
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 => {}
}
}
This module was first created to be used in Catmandu::XML and turned out to also become a replacement for XML::Simple. See the former for more XML processing.
XML::Twig is another popular and powerfull module for stream-based processing of XML documents.
See XML::Smart, XML::Hash::LX, XML::Parser::Style::ETree, XML::Fast, and XML::Structured for different representations of XML data as data structures (feel free to implement converters from/to XML::Struct). XML::GenericJSON seems to be an outdated and incomplete attempt to capture more parts of XML Infoset in another data structure.
See JSONx for a kind of reverse direction (JSON in XML).
This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Jakob Voß.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.