Re^3: XML Parse, Spanish Elements

[misterb101]

Hi jbrugger, Does that also mean that it will return an array of arrays of arrays....?
The downside of something like that is that you would have to use $xml->[3]->[3]->[1]->[2] structures to reference nodes from your XML file. So you have to use you knowledge about the structure of the XML file to be able to reference nodes. That feels unconfortable to me at least.
The nice thing about XML::XPath is that you can use full xpath expressions like /document//element_somwhere[@att="val"]/../next-sibbling or anything like that.

before this starts sounding like a sales-pitch for XML::XPath, I think users should just use what feels most confortable.

[jbrugger]

From the docs:


ForceArray => 1

    <opt>
      <name>value</name>
    </opt>

would parse to this:

    {
      'name' => [
                  'value'
                ]
    }

instead of this (the default):

    {
      'name' => 'value'
    }

[misterb101]

Hi jbrugger,

To explain the reasong why I am unconfortable with XML::Simple, let me show you an example:


#!/usr/bin/perl

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $xml1 =<<"eof";
<config logdir="/var/log/foo/" debugfile="/tmp/foo.debug">
    <server name="sahara" osname="solaris" osversion="2.6">
      <address>10.0.0.101</address>
      <address>10.0.1.101</address>
    </server>
    <server name="gobi" osname="irix" osversion="6.5">
      <address>10.0.0.102</address>
    </server>
    <server name="kalahari" osname="linux" osversion="2.0.34">
      <address>10.0.0.103</address>
      <address>10.0.1.103</address>
    </server>
  </config>
eof

my $xml2 =<<"eof";
<config logdir="/var/log/foo/" debugfile="/tmp/foo.debug">
    <server attr="sahara" osname="solaris" osversion="2.6">
      <address>10.0.0.101</address>
      <address>10.0.1.101</address>
    </server>
    <server attr="gobi" osname="irix" osversion="6.5">
      <address>10.0.0.102</address>
    </server>
    <server attr="kalahari" osname="linux" osversion="2.0.34">
      <address>10.0.0.103</address>
      <address>10.0.1.103</address>
    </server>
  </config>
eof

print "Structure1:\n".Dumper(XMLin($xml1,ForceArray => 1));
print "Structure2:\n".Dumper(XMLin($xml2,ForceArray => 1));



The two pieces of XML are identical exept that in the first one the attribute name (could also be id) is specified, in the second it is not. The result is a parse structure that is completely different, changing the first element from an array into a hash! This is with ForceArray turned on.

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If you look at the semantics of things, why does changing an attribute name (whether it is 'name' or not) change the structure of the resulting parse tree? I find this illogical and prone to making mistakes while parsing an XML file, but maybe that's just me.

[jbrugger]

Hmm.... weird, but you are right here...
Anyway.. Like others said... well, don't use it :-)