LibXML(3pm)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					       LibXML(3pm)

NAME

       XML::SimpleObject::LibXML - Perl extension allowing a simple(r) object representation of an XML::LibXML DOM object.

SYNOPSIS

	 use XML::SimpleObject::LibXML;

	 # Construct with the key/value pairs as argument; this will create its
	 # own XML::LibXML object.
	 my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject(XML => $XML);

	 # ... or construct with the parsed tree as the only argument, having to
	 # create the XML::Parser object separately.
	 my $parser = new XML::LibXML;
	 my $dom    = $parser->parse_file($file); # or $parser->parse_string($xml);
	 my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML ($dom);

	 my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files")->child("file");

	 $filesobj->name;
	 $filesobj->value;
	 $filesobj->attribute("type");

	 %attributes	= $filesobj->attributes;
	 @children	= $filesobj->children;
	 @some_children = $filesobj->children("some");
	 @children_names = $filesobj->children_names;

DESCRIPTION

       This is a short and simple class allowing simple object access to a parsed XML::LibXML tree, with methods for fetching children and
       attributes in as clean a manner as possible. My apologies for further polluting the XML:: space; this is a small and quick module, with
       easy and compact usage. Some will rightfully question placing another interface over the DOM methods provided by XML::LibXML, but my
       experience is that people appreciate the total simplicity provided by this module, despite its limitations.

USAGE

       $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML($parser->parse_string($XML))
	   $parser is an XML::LibXML object.

	   After creating $xmlobj, this object can now be used to browse the XML tree with the following methods.

       $xmlobj->child('NAME')
	   This will return a new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML object using the child element NAME.

       $xmlobj->children('NAME')
	   Called with an argument NAME, children() will return an array of XML::SimpleObject::LibXML objects of element NAME. Thus, if $xmlobj
	   represents the top-level XML element, 'children' will return an array of all elements directly below the top-level that have the
	   element name NAME.

       $xmlobj->children
	   Called without arguments, 'children()' will return an array of XML::SimpleObjects::LibXML objects for all children elements of $xmlobj.
	   Unlike XML::SimpleObject, XML::SimpleObject::LibXML retains the order of these children.

       $xmlobj->children_names
	   This will return an array of all the names of child elements for $xmlobj. You can use this to step through all the children of a given
	   element (see EXAMPLES), although multiple elements of the same name will not be identified. Use 'children()' instead.

       $xmlobj->value
	   If the element represented by $xmlobj contains any PCDATA, this method will return that text data.

       $xmlobj->attribute('NAME')
	   This returns the text for an attribute NAME of the XML element represented by $xmlobj.

       $xmlobj->attributes
	   This returns a hash of key/value pairs for all elements in element $xmlobj.

EXAMPLES

       Given this XML document:

	 <files>
	   <file type="symlink">
	     <name>/etc/dosemu.conf</name>
	     <dest>dosemu.conf-drdos703.eval</dest>
	   </file>
	   <file>
	     <name>/etc/passwd</name>
	     <bytes>948</bytes>
	   </file>
	 </files>

       You can then interpret the tree as follows:

	 my $parser = new XML::LibXML;
	 my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML ($parser->parse_string($XML));

	 print "Files: 
";
	 foreach my $element ($xmlobj->child("files")->children("file"))
	 {
	   print "  filename: " . $element->child("name")->value . "
";
	   if ($element->attribute("type"))
	   {
	     print "	type: " . $element->attribute("type") . "
";
	   }
	   print "    bytes: " . $element->child("bytes")->value . "
";
	 }

       This will output:

	 Files:
	   filename: /etc/dosemu.conf
	     type: symlink
	     bytes: 20
	   filename: /etc/passwd
	     bytes: 948

       You can use 'children()' without arguments to step through all children of a given element:

	 my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files")->child("file");
	 foreach my $child ($filesobj->children) {
	   print "child: ", $child->name, ": ", $child->value, "
";
	 }

       For the tree above, this will output:

	 child: bytes: 20
	 child: dest: dosemu.conf-drdos703.eval
	 child: name: /etc/dosemu.conf

       Using 'children_names()', you can step through all children for a given element:

	 my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files");
	 foreach my $childname ($filesobj->children_names) {
	     print "$childname has children: ";
	     print join (", ", $filesobj->child($childname)->children_names), "
";
	 }

       This will print:

	   file has children: bytes, dest, name

       By always using 'children()', you can step through each child object, retrieving them with 'child()'.

AUTHOR

       Dan Brian <dan@brians.org>

SEE ALSO

       perl(1), XML::SimpleObject, XML::Parser, XML::LibXML.

perl v5.10.1							    2010-01-03							       LibXML(3pm)