Question

I have a XML file of the format:

<outer1>
    <inner1>
        <name>Stonecold</name>
        <profession>warrior</profession>
        <org>wwf</org>
    </inner1>
    <inner1>
        <name>Shanebond</name>
        <profession>Bowler</profession>
        <org>newzealand</org>
    </inner1>
    <inner1>
        <name>brain schemidit</name>
        <profession>Chairman</profession>
        <org>Google</org>
    </inner1>
</outer1>

I want to change the value of Shanebond to Shane Bond.

I was using XML::Simple, but the result was a hash.

I want the same format as the input file. E.g: the output file should be as follows:

<outer1>
    <inner1>
        <name>Stonecold</name>
        <profession>warrior</profession>
        <org>wwf</org>
    </inner1>
    <inner1>
        <name>Shane Bond</name>
        <profession>Bowler</profession>
        <org>newzealand</org>
    </inner1>
    <inner1>
        <name>brain schemidit</name>
        <profession>Chairman</profession>
        <org>Google</org>
    </inner1>
</outer1>

Please advice how to do this.

Thanks in advance.

I want the output file to be saved in the same directory and if possible with the same name. is it possible?

Answer 1

XML::Simple has options that allow you to specify how input will be transformed into a Perl data structure and how that structure will be output:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::Simple;

my $xml_file = 'b.xml';

my $xml = XMLin(
    $xml_file,
    KeepRoot => 1,
    ForceArray => 1,
);

$xml->{outer1}->[0]->{inner1}->[1]->{name} = 'Shane Bond';

XMLout(
    $xml,
    KeepRoot => 1,
    NoAttr => 1,
    OutputFile => $xml_file,
);

XML::Simple does get a little hairy if you do anything interesting because its purpose is not to be a general purpose XML library but to provide a simple way to deal with configuration files written in XML.

CPAN has a plethora of XML related modules. Unless this was a one-off issue you had to deal with, it would be worth looking into some of the more capable and better suited modules.