how to get block of xml code through perl - perl

Question

From morning i was scratching my head to resolve the below requirment. I know how to parse an xml but not able to find out the sollution to get the exact block along with tags.
sample code:
<employee name="sample1">
<interest name="cricket">
<function action= "bowling">
<rating> average </rating>
</function>
</interest>
<interest name="football">
<function action="defender">
<rating> good </rating>
</function>
</interest>
</employee>
I just want to extract the below content from above xml file and write it into another text file.
<interest name="cricket">
<function action= "bowling">
<rating> average </rating>
</function>
</interest>
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Using XML::Twig:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Twig;
XML::Twig->new( twig_handlers => { 'interest[#name="cricket"]' => sub { $_->print } },
)
->parsefile( 'interest.xml');
A little explanation: the twig_handler is called when an element satisfying the trigger condition, in this case interest[#name="cricket"], is satisfied. At this point the associated sub is called. In the sub $_ is set to be the current element, which is then print'ed. For more complex subs, 2 arguments are passed, the twig itself (the document) and the current element.
Voilà.
Also with XML::Twig comes a tool called xml_grep, which makes it easy to extract what you want:
xml_grep --nowrap 'interest[#name="cricket"]' interest.xml
the --nowrap option prevents the default behaviour which wraps the results in a containing element.