XML::Simple attribute indentation not working

[Popcorn Dave]

Fellow monks,

I'm finally getting my feet wet with XML by trying to combine two XML files in to one. So far so good, but when I write the XML file back, attribute indentation in XML::Simple is being ignored.

open FH, ">", "webcams.xml";
print FH XMLout($combined, KeyAttr => {AttrIndent => 1,
                            xmldecl => '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="
+UTF-8"?>',});
close FH;

As it stands, the code is printing the XML as this:

<opt class="java.beans.XMLDecoder" version="1.6.0-oem">
  <object class="java.util.HashSet">
    <void method="add" string="baseball" />
    <void method="add" string="football" />
  </object>
</opt>

According to the docs, unless I misread them, the AttrIndent => 1 should indent the tags so it looks like this:

<java version="1.6.0_02" class="java.beans.XMLDecoder"> 
 <object class="java.util.HashSet"> 
  <void method="add">
   <string>baseball</string>
  </void>
  <void method="add">
   <string>football</string>
  </void> 
 </object>
</java>

What have I overlooked to get the indentation to work as in the second XML example?

Thanks in advance!

[andreas1234567]

I don't think AttrIndent does what you expect.

XML::Simple:

AttrIndent => 1 # out - handy

When you are using XMLout(), enable this option to have attributes printed one-per-line with sensible indentation rather than all on one line.

Update 1: Args to XMLout is a list, not a hash, as pointed out by Anonymous Monk.

Update 2: Using use XML::Simple qw(:strict); would have given a warning:

No value specified for 'ForceArray' option in call to XMLin()

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Simple;

my $str = <<EOL;
<opt class="java.beans.XMLDecoder" version="1.6.0-oem">
  <object class="java.util.HashSet">
    <void method="add" string="baseball" />
    <void method="add" string="football" />
  </object>
</opt>
EOL

my $ref = XMLin($str);
open FH, ">", "webcams.xml" or die ("open failed");
print FH XMLout($ref, 
  AttrIndent => 1,
  xmldecl => '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>');
close FH or die ("close failed");
__END__
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opt class="java.beans.XMLDecoder"
     version="1.6.0-oem">
  <object class="java.util.HashSet">
    <void method="add"
          string="baseball" />
    <void method="add"
          string="football" />
  </object>
</opt>

[Anonymous Monk]

options are a list
http://search.cpan.org/grep?release=XML-Simple-2.18&string=AttrIndent&i=1&n=1


1034:# Try the 'AttrIndent' option (assume NoSort defaults to off)
1046:$_ = XMLout($ref, AttrIndent => 1, RootName => 'opt');
1054:', 'AttrIndent seems to work');

[Popcorn Dave]

Thank you both for the replies! I see where I went wrong now.

That said, is there something that I've overlooked in XML::Simple that will actually break out the tags rather than what I would call the shorthand verstion( for lack of a better term )?

For example:

<void method="add">
   <string>baseball</string>
  </void>

instead of

<void method="add" string="baseball" />

or is this something that I'm going to have to re-parse and rewrite myself?