XML::TokeParser

XML::TokeParser is a Perl module that provides a procedural ("pull mode") interface to XML::Parser. It operates similarly to Gisle Aas' HTML::TokeParser, which provides a procedural interface to HTML::Parser. The module splits its XML input into "tokens," with each token corresponding to an XML::Parser event. Each token is an object of type XML::TokeParser::Token that is a bless'd reference to an array. The first element is an event-type string, while the last element is the literal text of the XML input that generated the event.

Intermediate elements in a token can vary according to the event type. You can read about the methods available for inspecting the token and retrieving data from it in "XML::TokeParser::Token."

To use the module, you can parse from a file, an open handle, or literal text. When parsing from a file, you need to provide the file name. When parsing from an open handle, you need to provide the handle and can choose an option like "Noempty" to specify the behavior when encountering empty elements. When parsing literal text, you can specify options like "Namespaces."

You can read the next token using "$p->get_token()." You can then skip to a specific tag and read its text using "$p->get_tag('tag')" and "$p->get_text()." If you want to ignore internal markup when reading the text of a tag, you can use "$p->get_trimmed_text('/tag')."

You can also save the current state of the module using "begin_saving," restore the saved state using "restore_saved," and process a tag if it contains interesting text using "get_trimmed_text" with a regular expression and "process_para."