XML::Parser::Lite(3)

NAME
XML::Parser::Lite - Lightweight pure-perl XML Parser (based on regexps)

SYNOPSIS
  use XML::Parser::Lite;

  $p1 = new XML::Parser::Lite;
  $p1->setHandlers(
    Start => sub { shift; print "start: @_\n" },
    Char => sub { shift; print "char: @_\n" },
    End => sub { shift; print "end: @_\n" },
  );
  $p1->parse('<foo id="me">Hello World!</foo>');

  $p2 = new XML::Parser::Lite
    Handlers => {
      Start => sub { shift; print "start: @_\n" },
      Char => sub { shift; print "char: @_\n" },
      End => sub { shift; print "end: @_\n" },
    }
  ;
  $p2->parse('<foo id="me">Hello <bar>cruel</bar> World!</foo>');

DESCRIPTION
This module implements an XML parser with a interface similar to XML::Parser. Though not all callbacks are supported, you should be able to use it in the same way you use XML::Parser. Due to using experimental regexp features it'll work only on Perl 5.6 and above and may behave differently on different platforms.

Note that you cannot use regular expressions or split in callbacks. This is due to a limitation of perl's regular expression implementation (which is not re-entrant).

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

  new
Constructor.

The new() method returns the object called on when called as object method. This behaviour was inherited from SOAP::Lite, which XML::Parser::Lite was split out from. This means that the following effectively is a no-op if $obj is a object:

 $obj = $obj->new();

New accepts a single named parameter, "Handlers" with a hash ref as value:

 my $parser = XML::Parser::Lite->new(
    Handlers => {
        Start => sub { shift; print "start: @_\n" },
        Char => sub { shift; print "char: @_\n" },
        End => sub { shift; print "end: @_\n" },
    }
 );

The handlers given will be passed to setHandlers.

  setHandlers
Sets (or resets) the parsing handlers. Accepts a hash with the handler names and handler code references as parameters. Passing "undef" instead of a code reference replaces the handler by a no-op.

The following handlers can be set:

 Init
 Start
 Char
 End
 Final

All other handlers are ignored.

Calling setHandlers without parameters resets all handlers to no-ops.

  parse
Parses the XML given. In contrast to XML::Parser's parse method, parse() only parses strings.

Handler methods

  Init
Called before parsing starts. You should perform any necessary initializations in Init.

  Start
Called at the start of each XML node. See XML::Parser for details.

  Char
Called for each character sequence. May be called multiple times for the characters contained in an XML node (even for every single character). Your implementation has to make sure that it captures all characters.

  End
Called at the end of each XML node. See XML::Parser for details

  Comment
See XML::Parser for details

  XMLDecl
See XML::Parser for details

  Doctype
See XML::Parser for details

  Final
Called at the end of the parsing process. You should perform any necessary cleanup here.

SEE ALSO
XML::Parser - a full-blown XML Parser, on which XML::Parser::Lite is based. Requires a C compiler and the expat XML parser.

XML::Parser::LiteCopy - a fork in XML::Parser::Lite::Tree.

YAX - another pure-perl module for XML parsing.

XML::Parser::REX - another module that parses XML with regular expressions.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2000-2007 Paul Kulchenko. All rights reserved.

Copyright (C) 2008- Martin Kutter. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

This parser is based on "shallow parser" <http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html> Copyright (c) 1998, Robert D. Cameron.

AUTHOR
Paul Kulchenko (paulclinger@yahoo.com)

Martin Kutter (martin.kutter@fen-net.de)

Additional handlers supplied by Adam Leggett.