NAME

       XML::SimpleObject::LibXML - Perl extension allowing a simple(r) object representation of
       an XML::LibXML DOM object.

SYNOPSIS

         use XML::SimpleObject::LibXML;

         # Construct with the key/value pairs as argument; this will create its
         # own XML::LibXML object.
         my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject(XML => $XML);

         # ... or construct with the parsed tree as the only argument, having to
         # create the XML::Parser object separately.
         my $parser = new XML::LibXML;
         my $dom    = $parser->parse_file($file); # or $parser->parse_string($xml);
         my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML ($dom);

         my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files")->child("file");

         $filesobj->name;
         $filesobj->value;
         $filesobj->attribute("type");

         %attributes    = $filesobj->attributes;
         @children      = $filesobj->children;
         @some_children = $filesobj->children("some");
         @children_names = $filesobj->children_names;

DESCRIPTION

       This is a short and simple class allowing simple object access to a parsed XML::LibXML
       tree, with methods for fetching children and attributes in as clean a manner as possible.
       My apologies for further polluting the XML:: space; this is a small and quick module, with
       easy and compact usage. Some will rightfully question placing another interface over the
       DOM methods provided by XML::LibXML, but my experience is that people appreciate the total
       simplicity provided by this module, despite its limitations.

USAGE

       $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML($parser->parse_string($XML))
           $parser is an XML::LibXML object.

           After creating $xmlobj, this object can now be used to browse the XML tree with the
           following methods.

       $xmlobj->child('NAME')
           This will return a new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML object using the child element NAME.

       $xmlobj->children('NAME')
           Called with an argument NAME, children() will return an array of
           XML::SimpleObject::LibXML objects of element NAME. Thus, if $xmlobj represents the
           top-level XML element, 'children' will return an array of all elements directly below
           the top-level that have the element name NAME.

       $xmlobj->children
           Called without arguments, 'children()' will return an array of
           XML::SimpleObjects::LibXML objects for all children elements of $xmlobj. Unlike
           XML::SimpleObject, XML::SimpleObject::LibXML retains the order of these children.

       $xmlobj->children_names
           This will return an array of all the names of child elements for $xmlobj. You can use
           this to step through all the children of a given element (see EXAMPLES), although
           multiple elements of the same name will not be identified. Use 'children()' instead.

       $xmlobj->value
           If the element represented by $xmlobj contains any PCDATA, this method will return
           that text data.

       $xmlobj->attribute('NAME')
           This returns the text for an attribute NAME of the XML element represented by $xmlobj.

       $xmlobj->attributes
           This returns a hash of key/value pairs for all elements in element $xmlobj.

EXAMPLES

       Given this XML document:

         <files>
           <file type="symlink">
             <name>/etc/dosemu.conf</name>
             <dest>dosemu.conf-drdos703.eval</dest>
           </file>
           <file>
             <name>/etc/passwd</name>
             <bytes>948</bytes>
           </file>
         </files>

       You can then interpret the tree as follows:

         my $parser = new XML::LibXML;
         my $xmlobj = new XML::SimpleObject::LibXML ($parser->parse_string($XML));

         print "Files: \n";
         foreach my $element ($xmlobj->child("files")->children("file"))
         {
           print "  filename: " . $element->child("name")->value . "\n";
           if ($element->attribute("type"))
           {
             print "    type: " . $element->attribute("type") . "\n";
           }
           print "    bytes: " . $element->child("bytes")->value . "\n";
         }

       This will output:

         Files:
           filename: /etc/dosemu.conf
             type: symlink
             bytes: 20
           filename: /etc/passwd
             bytes: 948

       You can use 'children()' without arguments to step through all children of a given
       element:

         my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files")->child("file");
         foreach my $child ($filesobj->children) {
           print "child: ", $child->name, ": ", $child->value, "\n";
         }

       For the tree above, this will output:

         child: bytes: 20
         child: dest: dosemu.conf-drdos703.eval
         child: name: /etc/dosemu.conf

       Using 'children_names()', you can step through all children for a given element:

         my $filesobj = $xmlobj->child("files");
         foreach my $childname ($filesobj->children_names) {
             print "$childname has children: ";
             print join (", ", $filesobj->child($childname)->children_names), "\n";
         }

       This will print:

           file has children: bytes, dest, name

       By always using 'children()', you can step through each child object, retrieving them with
       'child()'.

AUTHOR

       Dan Brian <dan@brians.org>

SEE ALSO

       perl(1), XML::SimpleObject, XML::Parser, XML::LibXML.