NAME
    XML::Simpler - Simpler API for handling XML

SYNOPSIS
      use XML::Simpler;
 
      my $ref = XMLin($filename);

      XMLout($ref, $filename);

BACKGROUND
    In the years since XML::Simple was released, many people have taken the
    time to email me suggestions for how the module could be improved.

    It rapidly became apparent to me that what these people wanted could not
    be achieved through small changes to XML::Simple (even though most
    correspondents expressed opinions to the contrary).

    The recurring complaints were:

    *   XML::Simple does not always preserve element order

    *   When XML is written out, elements can get translated into attributes

    *   The original encoding is not maintained when the file is read

    *   The data structures returned by XMLin() are too complex

    *   There are too many options

    *   There is too much documentation

    Clearly a whole new approach was required and so XML::Simpler was
    born...

DESCRIPTION
    XML::Simpler offers the following improvements over XML::Simple:

    *   Element order is always preserved

    *   Elements are never translated into attributes

    *   Indentation and whitespace is preserved

    *   Absolutely no encoding translations are performed (unless the 'utf8'
        option is enabled - see below)

    In addition to these changes, the data structures returned by XMLin()
    have been vastly simplified. All hashrefs and arrayrefs have been
    eliminated, and instead the contents of the XML file are represented
    using a single scalar value which perfectly preserves the fidelity of
    the original document. In fact the format of this data structure is so
    intuitive that new users will be able to work with it immediately
    without reading the documentation.

    The new data structure offers a number of exciting possibilities:

    *   The need for documents to comply with the strict (and often
        inconvenient) syntax rules defined in the W3C XML Recommendation has
        been relaxed.

    *   It is no longer necessary to use an encoding declaration when
        pasting in accented characters, symbols and 'smart quotes' from MS
        Word (in fact you can mix multiple encodings in the same file).

    *   It is also possible to embed HTML (including unbalanced or unclosed
        tags) in your files without having to resort to CDATA sections.

    Furthermore, the new data structure and relaxed rules mean that
    XML::Simpler is not restricted to XML data. In fact the new module works
    equally well with INI files, CSV files and all of the 'dot file' formats
    commonly used on Unix systems.

    In the absence of hash keys and array indexes, users will need to adopt
    different techniques for extracting individual data values. The most
    popular approach will likely be regular expressions but this is Perl and
    there is always more than one way to do it, so split() and substr() are
    likely to be popular alternatives.

METHODS
    XML::Simple's object oriented API has been discarded in favour of the
    simpler procedural interface. These two routines are exported by
    default:

  XMLin(filename, option)

    For compatibility with XML::Simple, this method is named XMLin() but as
    described above it should work with most file formats. It takes a
    filename and returns the contents of the file represented as a single
    scalar value (no nested hashrefs etc).

  XMLout(ref, filename)

    This method can be used to write data out to an XML (or other) format
    file. It takes a scalar value in the format returned by XMLin() and a
    filename. The contents of the scalar is written to the named file.

OPTIONS
    Perhaps surprisingly, all this added flexibility comes with a vastly
    simplified API. In fact the new API supports only one option: 'utf8'.
    This option is disabled by default but if it is enabled, XMLin() will
    auto-detect the encoding and convert the data to UTF-8.

    This option will not be fully implemented until Perl version 5.8 (or
    perhaps 6.0). In the current release, enabling this option will cause
    your data to be replaced with a pseudo-random character string of
    approximately the same length. As many of my correspondents have pointed
    out, UTF-8 encoded data is virtually indistinguishable from random
    characters anyway so the current implementation should tide us over for
    some time.

DEPENDENCIES
    XML::Simpler does not require XML::Parser or a SAX parser. It does
    require File::Slurp.

    The 'utf8' option requires that your system implements /dev/random,
    however on Win32 platforms the system registry has been found to offer
    equivalent functionality.

RELEASE HISTORY
    Version 1.00 of XML::Simpler was released on April 1st, 2002

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright 2002 Grant McLean <grantm@[...].org> 

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



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