Return array of hashes in perl - perl

Question

The below function logins into a router, executes a command to get the IPsec session status and returns the interface name and ip address as string. Instead of returning a string, I want the function to return array of hashes. Can someone help me out with that ?
sub cryptoSessionStatus {
my ($self,$interface) = #_;
my $status = 0;
my $peer_ip = 0;
#command to check the tunnel status
my $cmd = 'command goes here ' . $interface;
#$self->_login();
my $tunnel_status = $self->_login->exec($cmd);
#Regex to match the 'tunnel status' and 'peer ip' string in the cmd output
#Session status: DOWN/UP
#Peer: x.x.x.x
foreach my $line ( $tunnel_status ) {
if ( $line =~ m/Session\s+status:\s+(.*)/ ) {
$status = $1;
}
if ( $line =~ m/Peer:\s+(\d+.\d+.\d+.\d+)/ ) {
$peer_ip = $1;
}
}
return ($status,$peer_ip);
}
Function call:
my $tunnel_obj = test::Cryptotunnels->new('host'=> 'ip');
my $crypto_sessions = $tunnel_obj->cryptoSessionStatus("tunnel1");

Answer 1

This should do it:
my #session_states;
my $status;
foreach my $line ( $tunnel_status ) {
if ( $line =~ m/Session\s+status:\s+(.*)/ ) {
$status = $1;
}
if ( $line =~ m/Peer:\s+(\d+.\d+.\d+.\d+)/ ) {
push #session_states, { ip => $1 , status => $status };
$status = ""
}
}
return \#session_states;
#
# called like so
#
my $tunnel_obj = test::Cryptotunnels->new('host'=> 'ip');
my $crypto_sessions = $tunnel_obj->cryptoSessionStatus("tunnel1");
for my $obj (#$crypto_sessions) {
print $obj->{ip}, "\n";
print $obj->{status}, "\n";
}
This assumes the Session status line appears before the Peer line in the output. If its the other way around (you didn't supply a sample of what the router output looks like, so I have to guess a bit...) ie: if the Peer line is before the Session status line then it should be like this:
my #session_states;
my $peer_ip;
foreach my $line ( $tunnel_status ) {
if ( $line =~ m/Session\s+status:\s+(.*)/ ) {
push #session_states, { ip => $peer_ip , status => $1 };
$peer_ip = "";
}
if ( $line =~ m/Peer:\s+(\d+.\d+.\d+.\d+)/ ) {
$peer_ip = $1;
}
}
return \#session_states;
#
# called the same as above
#
There's no real difference in the algorithm - whichever comes second in the output - Peer or Session status - defines the end of the entry and a hash is created with the two entries and pushed onto the #session_states array.