XML::Struct(3pm)

NAME
XML-Struct - Represent XML as data structure preserving element order

SYNOPSIS
    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 } }

DESCRIPTION
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 <http://www.w3.org/community/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.

MODULES

XML::Struct::Reader
    Parse XML as stream into XML data structures.

XML::Struct::Writer
    Write XML data structures to XML streams for serializing, SAX processing, or creating a DOM object.

XML::Struct::Writer::Stream
    Simplified SAX handler for XML serialization.

XML::Struct::Simple
    Transform XML data structure into simple form.

FUNCTIONS
The following functions are exported on request:

  readXML( $source [, %options ] )
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.

  writeXML( $xml [, %options ] )
Write an XML document/element with XML::Struct::Writer. See XML::Struct::Writer for options.

  simpleXML( $element [, %options ] )
Transform an XML document/element into simple key-value format as known from XML::Simple. See XML::Struct::Simple for options.

  removeXMLAttr( $element )
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!

EXAMPLE
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 => {}
        }
    }

SEE ALSO
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).

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
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.