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.

