Question

So I wrote some perl that would parse results returned from the Amazon Web Services. I am using the XML::Simple package. For the most part, everything worked when I pulled out an element. However, the problem I ran into was when an element had an attribute as well. Then I get an error that the item is a Hash.

Here’s what I did if I wanted to get the Running Time for a DVD: I just created an item to hold the specific info for this one-off item.

// XML <ProductGroup>DVD</ProductGroup> <RunningTime Units='minutes'>90</RunningTime>  // Perl to parse XML  my $item = $xml->XMLin($content, KeyAttr => { Item => 'ASIN'}, ForceArray => ['ASIN']);      $ProductGroup = $item->{Items}->{Item}->{ItemAttributes}->{ProductGroup};  if(ref($item->{Items}->{Item}->{ItemAttributes}->{RunningTime}) eq 'HASH'){     $RunningTimeXML = $xml->XMLin($content, KeyAttr => { Item => 'ASIN'}, NoAttr => 1);     $RunningTime = $RunningTimeXML->{Items}->{Item}->{ItemAttributes}->{RunningTime}; } 

Is there a way I can access both elements and attributes from one item?

Answer 1

$item is a hashref that looks like this:

$item = {     'RunningTime'  => {'content' => '90', 'Units' => 'minutes'},     'ProductGroup' => 'DVD' }; 

Therefore you can get the running time like this:

$RunningTime = $item->{RunningTime}->{content}