NAME XML-Struct - Represent XML as data structure preserving element order SYNOPSIS use XML::Struct qw(readXML writeXML simpleXML removeXMLAttr); my $xml = readXML( "input.xml" ); # [ root => { xmlns => 'http://example.org/' }, [ '!', [ x => {}, [42] ] ] ] my $doc = writeXML( $xml ); # # !42 my $simple = simpleXML( $xml, root => 'record' ); # { record => { xmlns => 'http://example.org/', x => 42 } } my $xml2 = removeXMLAttr($xml); # [ root => [ '!', [ x => [42] ] ] ] DESCRIPTION XML::Struct implements a mapping between XML and Perl data structures. By default, the mapping preserves element order, so it also suits for "document-oriented" XML. In short, an XML element is represented as array reference with three parts: [ $name => \%attributes, \@children ] This data structure corresponds to the abstract data model of MicroXML , a simplified subset of XML. If your XML documents don't contain relevant attributes, you can also choose to map to this format: [ $name => \@children ] Both parsing (with XML::Struct::Reader or function "readXML") and serializing (with XML::Struct::Writer or function "writeXML") are fully based on XML::LibXML, so performance is better than XML::Simple and similar to XML::LibXML::Simple. MODULES XML::Struct::Reader Parse XML as stream into XML data structures. XML::Struct::Writer Write XML data structures to XML streams for serializing, SAX processing, or creating a DOM object. XML::Struct::Writer::Stream Simplified SAX handler for XML serialization. XML::Struct::Simple Transform XML data structure into simple form. FUNCTIONS The following functions are exported on request: readXML( $source [, %options ] ) Read an XML document with XML::Struct::Reader. The type of source (string, filename, URL, IO Handle...) is detected automatically. Options not known to XML::Struct::Reader are passed to XML::LibXML::Reader. writeXML( $xml [, %options ] ) Write an XML document/element with XML::Struct::Writer. simpleXML( $element [, %options ] ) Transform an XML document/element into simple key-value format as known from XML::Simple. See XML::Struct::Simple for configuration options. removeXMLAttr( $element ) Transform XML structure with attributes to XML structure without attributes. The function does not modify the passed element but creates a modified copy. EXAMPLE To give an example, with XML::Struct::Reader, this XML document: text text is transformed to this structure: [ "root", { }, [ [ "foo", { }, "text" ], [ "bar", { key => "value" }, [ "text", [ "doz", { }, [ ] ] ] ] ] This module also supports a simple key-value (aka "data-oriented") format, as used by XML::Simple. With option "simple" (or function "simpleXML") the document given above would be transformed to this structure: { foo => "text", bar => { key => "value", doz => {} } } SEE ALSO This module was first created to be used in Catmandu::XML and turned out to also become a replacement for XML::Simple. See the former for more XML processing. XML::Twig is another popular and powerfull module for stream-based processing of XML documents. See XML::Smart, XML::Hash::LX, XML::Parser::Style::ETree, XML::Fast, and XML::Structured for different representations of XML data as data structures (feel free to implement converters from/to XML::Struct). XML::GenericJSON seems to be an outdated and incomplete attempt to capture more parts of XML Infoset in another data structure. See JSONx for a kind of reverse direction (JSON in XML). COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Jakob Voß. This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.