Perl XML parsing with CSS selectors

Question

Does anybody know a Perl library that can parse XML documents and enables me to select nodes via CSS Selectors and namespace support?

Background: I was trying to parse a document with a default namespace with the perl libxml package but it never returned anything until I removed the default namespace from the root node.

This is what I found on the topic: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2003-April/msg00143.html

So a simple example would be a file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root xmlns="http://example.com/ns">
  <message>Hi</message>
</root

XPath //message wouldn't give me any results with perl libxml. I know that the library is doing it's job perfectly fine but I still need to parse that stuff, so I figured a CSS selector based library might be more successful.

Can you provide an example what you want to parse and what you want to get? — Ωmega
– Ωmega, Commented Jun 16, 2012 at 14:00
Pro tip: the graphical interface to libxml Xacobeo makes it easy to mess with XPath. Screenshot: i.sstatic.net/fOTus.png — daxim
– daxim, Commented Jun 16, 2012 at 15:09

daxim · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-16 14:39:30Z

1

This should work with anything you can throw at libxml.

use strictures;
use HTML::TreeBuilder::LibXML qw();
BEGIN { HTML::TreeBuilder::LibXML->replace_original; }
use Web::Query qw();

print Web::Query->new_from_html(<<'MARKUP')->find('root > message')->text;
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root xmlns="http://example.com/ns">
<message>Hi</message>
</root>
MARKUP

1;

answered Jun 16, 2012 at 14:39

daxim

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2 Comments

moritz Over a year ago

Thanks for the hint to Web::Query. I hoped to find something more CPANish. But this will do nicely.

moritz Over a year ago

Indeed, so even the boss will be happy ;)

Ωmega · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-16 14:16:30Z

1

Try this one:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use XML::XPath;
use XML::XPath::XMLParser;

my $xp = XML::XPath->new(filename => 'test.xhtml');

print XML::XPath::XMLParser::as_string($_), "\n" for ($xp->find('root/message')->get_nodelist);

answered Jun 16, 2012 at 14:16

Ωmega

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3 Comments

moritz Over a year ago

Thanks very much. Your code works on the example xml I provided as well as on my production data. I has almost the same code except that I used XML::Parser, which didn't find the message node.

daxim Over a year ago

The question was about CSS selectors.

moritz Over a year ago

@user1215106: I was indeed looking for a CSS selector library because I generally prefer it over XPath. This is why you get an upvote but no accept.

mirod · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-16 15:23:04Z

0

Unless you tell it too XML::Twig will happily ignore namespaces. You would get to message either by setting a handler on the element name, or by using an XPath query like my @messages= $twig->findnodes( '//message')

To use a handler you would write:

XML::Twig->new( twig_handlers => { message => \&process_message })
         ->parsefile( "my.xml"); )

sub process_message
  { my( $twig, $message)= @_;
    print $message->text;
  }

answered Jun 16, 2012 at 15:23

mirod

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2 Comments

daxim Over a year ago

Can you rewrite this to use HTML-Selector-XPath so that we arrive at the node through a CSS selector?

mirod Over a year ago

no ;--) XML::Twig lets you use tag.class though, which I often find to be a useful shortcut

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