Perl Newbie - Printing value from array - perl

Question

I am brand new to perl. I am trying to grab a string out of some JSON output. My code below works, but seems like there is a smarter way to do this. Here is a sample of the JSON
$VAR1 = '{
"hasDetailRows" : true,
"reportMetadata" : {
"reportFormat" : "TABULAR",
"detailColumns" : [ "SUBJECT", "COMMENT_CREATED_DATE", "CASE_COMMENT_CREATED_BY" ],
"reportBooleanFilter" : null,
"reportFilters" : [ {
"column" : "CASE_COMMENT_CREATED_BY",
"operator" : "equals",
"value" : "Username"
} ],
"aggregates" : [ "RowCount" ],
"groupingsDown" : [ ],
"groupingsAcross" : [ ],
"developerName" : "My_Comments",
"reportType" : {
"type" : "CaseList",
"label" : "Cases"
},
"name" : "My Comments",
"id" : "REDCATED",
"currency" : null
},
"factMap" : {
"T!T" : {
"rows" : [ {
"dataCells" : [ {
"value" : "ID",
"label" : "Description"
}, {
"value" : "2014-02-17T22:01:17Z",
"label" : "2/17/2014 4:01 PM"
}, {
"value" : "USER ID",
"label" : "User Name"
} ]
}`
What I need is that label with the timestamp.
And here is my code
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;
use WWW::Salesforce;
use Data::Dumper;
use JSON -support_by_pp;
use 5.010;
use Date::Parse;
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$mech->agent('Mozilla/5.0');
# Authenticate first via SOAP interface to get a session ID:
my $sforce = eval { WWW::Salesforce->login(
username => 'REDACTED',
password => 'REDACTED' ); };
die "Could not login to SFDC: $#" if $#;
# Get the session ID:
my $hdr = $sforce->get_session_header();
my $sid = ${$hdr->{_value}->[0]}->{_value}->[0];
#Our request
$mech->add_header( "Authorization" => "OAuth $sid" );
$mech->add_header( "X-PrettyPrint" => '1' );
$mech->get("SOME URL THAT RETURNS JSON");
my $content = $mech->content;
my $json = new JSON;
my $json_text = $json->allow_nonref->utf8->relaxed->escape_slash->loose->allow_singlequote->allow_barekey->decode($content);
Here is what I have currently that grabs the value that I want from $content. All I need is the first result which is why I am killing the loop after the first run. Everytime I have tried this without a loop I get "Not a HASH reference". So all I need to know is the correct syntax for printing out the value of $timestamp.
foreach my $field(#{$json_text->{factMap}->{'T!T'}->{rows}}){
my $now = time();
my $timestamp = str2time($field->{dataCells}[1]->{'label'});
my $diff = int (($now - $timestamp)/60);
my $current = getLoggingTime();
print $current . " \t";
say "Time since last activity: " . $diff . " minutes!" ;
last;
}
sub getLoggingTime {
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=localtime(time);
my $nice_timestamp = sprintf ( "%04d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d",
$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min,$sec);
return $nice_timestamp;
}

Answer 1

I don't know what your without-a-loop version looks like, but this should work:
my $timestamp = str2time(
$json_text->{factMap}{'T!T'}{rows}[0]{dataCells}[1]{label}
);
Currently, you're looping over the elements of the array referenced by
$json_text->{factMap}{'T!T'}{rows}
...and stopping at the first entry
$json_text->{factMap}{'T!T'}{rows}[0]
...and dereferencing that to get to
$json_text->{factMap}{'T!T'}{rows}[0]{dataCells}[1]{label}