The link you have is old, here is the new_and_improved Perl XML FAQ. You can also have a look at Kip Hampton's Articles on xml.com , and I have a tutorial (a little old, covers mostly the non-SAX XML modules) on xmltwig.com.

What is XML::Lite BTW, I have never heard of that module?

Thanks for the references - persuing them now. (I have no idea what SAX is in this context yet - but hopefully I will soon:)

With respect to:

What is XML::Lite BTW, I have never hear of that module?

Sorry! The module name should have been XML::Parser::Lite

If anyone with editorial powers is reading this could they correct that for me as I appear not to be able to...by design I think!

XML::Parser::Lite is designed to parse SOAP messages, which encompass only a subset of XML, so I would definitely not use it as a generic parser. XML::SAX::PurePerl is a generic XML parser written entirely in Perl.It is quite slow but this probably doesn't matter for you. And if you use XML::SAX you can always replace it later by a faster parser.

BTW SAX is a standard api for processing XML in stream mode:it looks a bit like XML::Parser's basic api but is more recent and more powerful, especially when it comes to namespace processing (which you probably don't need right now). The most important features of SAX are that as it is standard you can swap parsers, go from a Perl one to a C one (like XML::libXML) or even use a parser that generates SAX calls from a non-XML source, such as Excel stylesheets (XML::SAXDriver::Excel) or CSV (XML::SAXDriver::CSV).

IIRC XML::Parser::Lite is XML parser which supports subset of XML::Parser's API. Another difference is that XML::Parser::Lite is pure Perl module and XML::Parser is XS module which uses C library expat. Normally there is no reason to choose XML::Parser::Lite over XML::Parser since former is much faster and offers more capabilities. The only reason to use XML::Parser::Lite is that you have problems compiling XML::Parser on your platform.

--
Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)

Next time I will do any more serious XML, I will most definetely look into XML::Twig - it seems to be very easy and simple to do things with too, with the added benefit of making it possible to "stream" your XML through it without the memory footprint. I've seen lots of great programmers here use that module, and without having actually used it myself - yet - I am very impressed.

In the recent thread XML Search and Replace there are quite a few examples on different modules being used to manipulate XML.

I don't think that is a typo. You can use XML::Simple to emit HTML, as long as you conform to XML rules, as XHTML does. It is just a warning that if you are trying to emit HTML, you can't/shouldn't do it HTML 4.0 (and down) style, but rather XHTML, which means, among other things, that all attributes must have a value. Just saying checked isn't enough in a checkbox, for instance, you must say checked="checked" or some such to be conformant. Which means, that an attribute, say as a hash key, is not a good idea to define as checked => '' (or undef), but should be checked => 'checked'. Hope that makes some sense. :)

Update: See jeffa's response below, and don't take this as a recommendation to use XMLout() to generate HTML, only a clarification to what it meant. :)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

I asked a similar question at Working with XML and received some good suggestions.