String to PERL data structure

[perl_lover]

Hi Monks,
In a legacy application PHP is communicating to PERL through Pipes. PHP file outputs a string data and in PERL we need to create the data structure. I tried with Data::Dumper but it is always returning undef. here is the string which PHP file gives

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [attrs] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1
                            [value] => -10
                            [options] => 0
                            [type] => 0
                        )
                    [1] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1
                            [value] => -10
                            [options] => 0
                            [type] => 0
                        )

                )

            [mesg_id] => 1
            [parent_id] => 0
            [thread_id] => 1
            [cat_id] => 3
            [folder_id] => 0
            [status] => 4
         )

)

Is there any way to Dump this structure into PERL data structure ?

[chromatic]

Can your PHP application emit JSON or YAML? If so, that's the easiest approach. Otherwise, you need to write some sort of parser for whatever data structure that string represents in Perl. Data::Dumper produces Perl code that, when evaled, produces a Perl data structure. Your example is not Perl code.

[shmem]

Straight forward, quick and dirty. Usual caveats for string eval apply.

use Data::Dump::Streamer;

my $string;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp; s/\r//;
    # append a comma to lines not ending in 'Array' or '('
    # or being (other than containing whitespace) empty lines
    $_ .= ',' unless /(Array|\(|^\s*)$/;
    $string .= $_."\n";
}

sub Array {
    my %h;
    while(@_) {
        my ($key) = @{shift(@_)};
        $h {$key}  =  shift(@_);
    }
    \%h;
}
print $string,"\n";

my $ref = eval $string;

Dump $ref;

__DATA__
Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [attrs] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1
                            [value] => -10
                            [options] => 0
                            [type] => 0
                        )
                    [1] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1
                            [value] => -10
                            [options] => 0
                            [type] => 0
                        )

                )

            [mesg_id] => 1
            [parent_id] => 0
            [thread_id] => 1
            [cat_id] => 3
            [folder_id] => 0
            [status] => 4
         )

)

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [attrs] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1,
                            [value] => -10,
                            [options] => 0,
                            [type] => 0,
                        ),
                    [1] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1,
                            [value] => -10,
                            [options] => 0,
                            [type] => 0,
                        ),

                ),

            [mesg_id] => 1,
            [parent_id] => 0,
            [thread_id] => 1,
            [cat_id] => 3,
            [folder_id] => 0,
            [status] => 4,
         ),

),

$HASH1 = { 0 => {
           attrs     => {
                          0 => {
                                 key     => 'rat1',
                                 options => 0,
                                 type    => 0,
                                 value   => -10
                               },
                          1 => {
                                 key     => 'rat1',
                                 options => 0,
                                 type    => 0,
                                 value   => -10
                               }
                        },
           cat_id    => 3,
           folder_id => 0,
           mesg_id   => 1,
           parent_id => 0,
           status    => 4,
           thread_id => 1
         } };

[Zaxo]

The problem is that this PHP is not written in Perl. You will need some kind of parser for the subset of PHP which appears in your dumps. I did not find an Inline::PHP on cpan, but that is the kind of thing you will need. Parse::RecDescent may help if you need to write one.

[fmerges]

Hi,

As chromatic said, I would also go for YAML or JSON.

Regards,