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Perl newbie here. Can someone kindly show me how to use perl to extract data from this xml file and format the output anyway i would need? Would I use XML::Simple or open this as a fh and split it somehow? thank you.

Documentation for using XML::Simple doesn't seem simple to me.

For example I have a small xml file that looks like this.

test.xml

<?xml version="1.5" encoding="UTF-8"?><org.apache.Content duration="277135" count="51" numDirs="50" bytesUsed="110133451"/>

I would like to convert attribute="value" pairs to be readable like csv file, : or however, i want to print it out.

Ex:

duration:277135 count:51 numDirs:50 bytesUsed:110133451
RobEarl
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cjd143SD
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2 Answers2

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Use XML::Simple - Easy API to maintain XML (esp config files) or 
see XML::Twig - A perl module for processing huge XML documents in tree mode.

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $xml = q~<?xml version="1.5" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<org.apache.Content duration="277135" count="51" numDirs="50" bytesUsed="110133451"/>~;

print $xml,$/;

my $data = XMLin($xml);

print Dumper( $data );

foreach my $attributes (keys %{$data}){
  print"$attributes : ${$data}{$attributes}\n";
}

Output:

bytesUsed : 110133451
numDirs : 50
count : 51
duration : 277135
Nikhil Jain
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  • thank you for your help. can `$xml` be read in as a file too if the contents were in a separate xml file? how would i do that? – cjd143SD Apr 20 '11 at 04:35
  • yes you can do that by just providing the path of the xml file like `my $xml = "\path\to\test.xml";` – Nikhil Jain Apr 20 '11 at 04:42
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Since XML::Simple is not recommended for new code by the author himself ...

The use of this module in new code is discouraged. Other modules are available which provide more straightforward and consistent interfaces. In particular, XML::LibXML is highly recommended.

you might be interested in checking out https://metacpan.org/pod/XML::LibXML::Simple.

This module is a blunt rewrite of XML::Simple (by Grant McLean) to use the XML::LibXML parser for XML structures, where the original uses plain Perl or SAX parsers.

davewood
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