xml parsing

[lnatz]

I need to parse a configuration file using xml. How do I retrieve the
data between the elements? For example, if my configuration file was
organized in the following manner:

<configFile>
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>
<database> Schedulers </database>
<table> Sched_Info </table>
<user_column> userID </user_column>
<delete_column> Deleted </delete_column>
<delete_value> 2 </delete_value>
</configFile>

And would the textContent() function be needed? I considered doing the
following:

$server = "server_name";
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc = $parser->parse_file($configFile);
my $docRoot = $doc->getDocumentElement();
my @configs = $docRoot->getChildrenByTagName($server);
$dbserver= @configs[0] ->textContent();

I don't think it is properly written though and I don't think it would
work, but would that be something close to the proper way of parsing
the configuration file?

Thanks in advance,
Natalie

 

[Joseph Kesselman]

I need to parse a configuration file using xml. How do I retrieve the
data between the elements?

If you're parsing using SAX, that's returned as characters() events
(possibly multiple events per contiguous chunk of text; forgetting to
allow for that is the single most common SAX error).

If you're parsing into a DOM, that's returned as Text node children of
the Element node that encloses them.

And would the textContent() function be needed?

That funtion isn't a part of either of those two standard APIs, so I
can't advise.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_Kahrs?=]

I need to parse a configuration file using xml. How do I retrieve the
data between the elements? For example, if my configuration file was
organized in the following manner:

<configFile>
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>
<database> Schedulers </database>
<table> Sched_Info </table>
<user_column> userID </user_column>
<delete_column> Deleted </delete_column>
<delete_value> 2 </delete_value>
</configFile>

Why dont you put the data into attributes ?
Something like

<configFile servername="NY ONLINE" database="Schedulers">
...
</configFile>

 

[lnatz]

I did not want to put the data into attribute because I read that an
attribute is meant to describe the data in the elements. It is not
proper coding to make the whole configuration file an attribute like :

<configFile servername="NY ONLINE" database="Schedulers">
...
</configFile>

But to respond to Joseph Kesselman..I'm using SAX but I just don't
understand which functions to use to extract the data. For example:
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>
How can I get the "NY_ONLINE" ? Can I use character(), is that what you
mean? And what do you mean by :

 

[lnatz]

I did not want to put the data into attribute because I read that an
attribute is meant to describe the data in the elements. It is not
proper coding to make the whole configuration file an attribute like :

<configFile servername="NY ONLINE" database="Schedulers">
...
</configFile>

But to respond to Joseph Kesselman..I'm using SAX but I just don't
understand which functions to use to extract the data. For example:
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>
How can I get the "NY_ONLINE" ? Can I use character(), is that what you
mean? And what do you mean by :

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_Kahrs?=]

I did not want to put the data into attribute because I read that an
attribute is meant to describe the data in the elements. It is not
proper coding to make the whole configuration file an attribute like :

Who said that ? I have seen _many_ XML files
where all information is in the attributes.

But to respond to Joseph Kesselman..I'm using SAX but I just don't
understand which functions to use to extract the data. For example:
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>

Maybe you give an example telling us what you
want to do with the data. Dont get stuck when
you run into details that arent essential.

 

[Johannes Koch]

That funtion isn't a part of either of those two standard APIs, so I
can't advise.

textContent is part of DOM 3 Core.

 

[lnatz]

I figured it all out using XML::Simple, but thank you very much for
your help.

 

[Joseph Kesselman]

But to respond to Joseph Kesselman..I'm using SAX but I just don't

understand which functions to use to extract the data. For example:
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>
How can I get the "NY_ONLINE"?

Any good SAX tutorial should show you exactly how to do this. For
example, you might want to read through
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-xusax-i.html

 

[William Park]

I need to parse a configuration file using xml. How do I retrieve the
data between the elements? For example, if my configuration file was
organized in the following manner:

<configFile>
<server_name> NY_ONLINE </server_name>
<database> Schedulers </database>
<table> Sched_Info </table>
<user_column> userID </user_column>
<delete_column> Deleted </delete_column>
<delete_value> 2 </delete_value>
</configFile>

And would the textContent() function be needed? I considered doing the
following:

$server = "server_name";
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc = $parser->parse_file($configFile);
my $docRoot = $doc->getDocumentElement();
my @configs = $docRoot->getChildrenByTagName($server);
$dbserver= @configs[0] ->textContent();

I don't think it is properly written though and I don't think it would
work, but would that be something close to the proper way of parsing
the configuration file?

Not sure what you want to do after extracting the "data", but simple
printing would go something like

func () # Usage: func text
{
case ${XML_TAG_STACK[1]} in
configFile) echo "${XML_TAG_STACK[0]}={$1}" ;;
esac
}

expat -d func < file.xml

which produces

server_name={ NY_ONLINE }
database={ Schedulers }
table={ Sched_Info }
user_column={ userID }
delete_column={ Deleted }
delete_value={ 2 }

--
William Park <[email protected]>, Toronto, Canada
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