vagabonding electron has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
Hi All,
It is probably my misunderstanding, your advices are very much appreciated. I made an xml file to show the problem, the real file(s) are much more complex.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <root> <departments> <department> <name>A</name> <articles> <article> <production> <country>France</country> <year>1989</year> </production> <key>001</key> </article> <article> <production> <country>Italy</country> <year>1991</year> </production> <key>002</key> </article> <article> <extra> <production> <country>Germany</country> <year>1995</year> </production> <extrakey>003</extrakey> </extra> </article> </articles> </department> <department> <name>B</name> <articles> <article> <key>004</key> </article> <article> <key>005</key> </article> </articles> </department> <department> <name>C</name> </department> </departments> </root>
I parse the file with XML::Rabbit using the following library file (made for this example as well).
package House { use XML::Rabbit::Root; has_xpath_object_list depts => '/root/departments/department' => 'House::Depts'; finalize_class(); } package House::Depts { use XML::Rabbit; has_xpath_object_list articles => './articles/article[key]|./artic +les/article/extra' => 'House::Article'; has_xpath_value name => './name'; finalize_class(); } package House::Article { use XML::Rabbit; has_xpath_value key => './key|./extrakey'; has_xpath_object prod => './production' => 'Article::Production'; finalize_class(); } package Article::Production { use XML::Rabbit; has_xpath_value country => './country'; has_xpath_value year => './year'; finalize_class(); } 1;
Now I use this library file in the following script.
#!/perl use strict; use warnings FATAL => qw(all); use Encode; use FindBin qw($Bin); use lib $Bin; use testlib; use Try::Tiny; my $path = shift or die "No source!\n"; my $string = do { local $/ = undef; open my $in, "<", "$path" or die "$!";<$in>;}; my $xml = decode('utf8', $string); my $h = House->new(xml => $xml); for my $d ( @{$h->depts} ) { for my $art ( @{$d->articles} ) { my $prod = try {$art->prod} catch {0}; # $art->prod // 0; my $country = $prod ? $prod->country : ''; print join("\t", $d->name, $art->key, $country), $/; } }
You see that not all the articles have the "production" child. The line my $prod = $art->prod//0; (commented) would produce an error: "Attribute (prod) does not pass the type constraint because: Validation failed for 'Article::Production' with value undef at reader House::Article::prod (unknown origin)..." If I use try {...} catch {...}, then I get the awaited output.
A 001 France A 002 Italy A 003 Germany B 004 B 005
Now two questions.
- First, is the use of Try::Tiny here "decent" or is it just a hack and the output should be achieved without it by changing the code (probably in the library file)?
- Second, the script complains over missing xpath_object ("production") but does not seem to bother if xpath_object_list is not there: the loop over articles does not produce an error though there are not articles in the department C. Why does it make a difference?