XML::Simple how to prevent <name> content substitution with the refference? - perl

Question

I try to parse an xml document using XML::Simple perl parsing.
I noticed, if the document looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fields>
<field>
<f1>1234</f1>
<name>MyName1</name>
</field>
</fields>
the result of print(Dumper($ref)); looks as expected:
$VAR1 = {
'field' => {
'f1' => '1234',
'name' => 'MyName1'
}
};
while if I have more than one list in the document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fields>
<field>
<f1>1234</f1>
<name>MyName1</name>
</field>
<field>
<f1>567</f1>
<name>MyName2</name>
</field>
</fields>
the results looks like:
$VAR1 = {
'field' => {
'MyName1' => {
'f1' => '1234'
},
'MyName2' => {
'f1' => '567'
}
}
};
while expected results would be:
$VAR1 = { [
'field' => {
'f1' => '1234',
'name' => 'MyName1'
},
'field' => {
'f1' => '567',
'name' => 'MyName2'
}
]
};
what options of XML::Simple parser will prevent tag content substitution with the tag reference and use an array of <field> instead?

Answer 1

By default. XML::Simple names hash keys by the values of tags <name>, <key> and <id>. You can customize this behavior via KeyAttr setting.
Thus, the code which produces the structure closest to what you expect is:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use common::sense;
use Data::Dumper;
use XML::Simple;
local $/ = undef;
say Dumper XMLin(<DATA>, KeyAttr => []);
__DATA__
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fields>
<field>
<f1>1234</f1>
<name>MyName1</name>
</field>
<field>
<f1>567</f1>
<name>MyName2</name>
</field>
</fields>
And here is the output:
$VAR1 = {
'field' => [
{
'f1' => '1234',
'name' => 'MyName1'
},
{
'f1' => '567',
'name' => 'MyName2'
}
]
};

Answer 2

Use the ForceArray => 'field' option to XMLin.
In general you cannot mold the data structures that XML::Simple returns to whatever you want them to. XML::Simple is too simple for that. However, your use case is one that is described in the documentation. I suggest you read the documentation to all items that are marked as important at least, because it really helps knowing what your options are in shaping structures returned by XML::Simple.