Beginning Web Development With Perl : From Novice to ... - Nabo

168CHAPTER 9 ■ XML PARSING WITH PERLThe code shown uses the forcearray option, which isn’t really necessary. The XML beingparsed in this example consists of solely single values—each customer record has one andonly one value for date of birth, e-mail address, and so on. Another method to parse this particularXML looks like this:#!/usr/bin/perluse strict;use XML::Simple;my $xml = XMLin('./example1.xml');foreach my $customer (@{$xml->{customer}}) {print "Name: $customer->{first_name} $customer->{last_name}\n";print "Birthday: $customer->{dob}\n";print "E-mail Address: $customer->{email}\n";}The difference between this and the previously shown code is subtle. Missing from thisexample is the reference to the first element in the array ->[0]. When parsing XML with multivaluedelements, accessing those elements with forcearray makes access to the elementsmuch easier, as you’ll see a bit later in the “XML::Simple Options” section.Data::DumperAn even simpler, though arguably less useful method, for parsing an XML file with XML::Simple isto use Data::Dumper. You can use the Data::Dumper module to quickly print out the XML as it isbeing read and processed by the XMLin() subroutine. Doing so helps during debugging and inother cases, such as working with databases. Rather than using the foreach loop in the previousexample, you could use Data::Dumper to print the contents of the XML, as shown in this example:#!/usr/bin/perluse strict;use XML::Simple;use Data::Dumper;my $xml = XMLin('./example1.xml',forcearray => 1);print Dumper($xml);Compare the output from the earlier example with the output from the Data::Dumper versionof the program:$VAR1 = {'customer' => [{'email' => ['frank@example.com'],