Re^4: The best way to handle different type of XML files (Why I don't think much of XML::Simple)

I don't believe it. Let's compare the parsers by extracting the Person elements from the following very common structure:

    ...
    <Persons>
      <Person>...</Person>
      <Person>...</Person>
      <Person>...</Person>
    </Persons>
    ...
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The Persons element is optional and the number of Person elements is variable.

XML::Simple, without specifying a schema:

my $persons = $parent->{Persons};

my @persons =
      !$persons                ? ()
    : !$persons->{Person}      ? ()
    : !ref($persons->{Person}) ? $persons->{Person}
    :                            @{ $persons->{Person} };
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XML::Simple, specifying a schema via ForceArray, etc:

GroupTags  => { Persons => 'Person' },
ForceArray => [qw( Person )],

my @persons = $parent->{Persons} ? @{ $parent->{Persons} } : ();
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XML:::LibXML:

my @persons = $parent->findnodes('Persons/Person');
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Did I pick an example that XML::Simple handles poorly? Let's do another extremely common example to demonstrate otherwise. Let's extract the person's country.

    ...
    <Person>
      ...
      <Country ...>...</Country>
      ...
    </Person>
    ...
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XML::Simple, with default settings:

my $country =
      !defined($person->{Country}) ? undef
    : !ref($person->{Country})     ? $person->{Country}
    :                                $person->{Country}{content};
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XML::Simple, with ForceContent => 1:

my $country = $person->{Country} && $person->{Country}{content}
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XML:::LibXML:

my $country = $person->findvalue('Country');
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XML::Simple code is insane without a schema. It's much simpler with, but it's still longer and messier than with XML::LibXML. And it takes a lot of up-front time time to create the schema and lots of headaches from making mistakes.

With XML::LibXML, I don't have to do any of that up-front extra work XML::Simple requires. so in addition to being a better production parser (simpler, 50x faster, etc), it's a better prototyping parser too.

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Re^5: The best way to handle different type of XML files
by mpeever (Friar) on Nov 22, 2009 at 22:02 UTC

XML::Simple code is insane without a schema. It's much simpler with, but it's still longer and messier than with XML::LibXML. And it takes a lot of up-front time time to create the schema and lots of headaches from making mistakes. With XML::LibXML, I don't have to do any of that up-front extra work XML::Simple requires. so in addition to being a better production parser (simpler, 50x faster, etc), it's a better prototyping parser too.

You got me thinking, and I think you're probably right.

I'm playing with it now...

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