Convert a Perl Hash of Hashes into XML with XML::Dumper : phaq : http://phaq.phunsites.net

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For a project of mine, I wanted to convert a Perl data structure, a so called Hash of Hashes, into an XML.

The simple solution to this is to use the XML::Dumper module.

Let's suppose your data structure looks like this:

%hash_of_hashes = {

    item1 => {

                item1_1       => 'value1_1',

                item1_2       => 'value1_2',

    },

    item2 => {

                item2_1       => 'value2_1',

                item2_2       => 'value2_2',

    },

  };

You can easily convert this into an XML representation using this command:



my $xml_output  = XML::Dumper::pl2xml( %hash_of_hashes );

So you'll end up with this output:

<perldata>

 <hashref memory_address="0x878e784">

 <item key="item1">

 <hashref memory_address="0x87a8c58">

 <item key="item1_1">value1_1</item>

 <item key="item1_2">value1_2</item>

 </hashref>

 </item>

 <item key="item2">

 <hashref memory_address="0x87a8c61">

 <item key="item2_1">value2_1</item>

 <item key="item2_2">value2_2</item>

 </hashref>

 </item>

 </hashref>

</perldata>

But be aware: You need to pass the hash by reference, imposing the %hash_of_hashes notation, otherwise you end up with something like this:

<perldata>

 <scalar>item_1</scalar>

 <scalar>item_2</scalar>

</perldata>

It's so obvious, but I had overlooked that as well in the first attempts ;-)