NAME

XML::DTDParser - quick and dirty DTD parser

Version 2.01

SYNOPSIS

 use XML::DTDParser qw(ParseDTD ParseDTDFile);

 $DTD = ParseDTD $DTDtext;
#or
 $DTD = ParseDTDFile( $dtdfile)

DESCRIPTION

This module parses a DTD file and creates a data structure containing info about all tags, their allowed parameters, children, parents, optionality etc. etc. etc.

Since I'm too lazy to document the structure, parse a DTD you need and print the result to a file using Data::Dumper. The datastructure should be selfevident.

Note: The module should be able to parse just about anything, but it intentionaly looses some information. Eg. if the DTD specifies that a tag should contain either CHILD1 or CHILD2 you only get that CHILD1 and CHILD2 are optional. That is is the DTD contains <!ELEMENT FOO (BAR|BAZ)> the result will be the same is if it contained <!ELEMENT FOO (BAR?,BAZ?)>

You get the original unparsed parameter list as well so if you need this information you may parse it yourself.

Since version 1.6 this module supports my "extensions" to DTDs. If the DTD contains a comment in form

<!--#info element=XXX foo=bar greeting="Hello World!" person='d''Artagnan'-->

and there is an element XXX in the DTD, the resulting hash for the XXX will contain

'foo' => 'bar',
'person' => 'd\'Artagnan',
'greeting => 'Hello World!'

If the DTD contains

<!--#info element=XXX attribute=YYY break=no-->

the

$DTD->{XXX}->{attributes}->{YYY}->[4]

will be set to

{ break => 'no' }

I use this parser to import the DTD into the database so that I could map some fields to certain tags for output and I want to be able to specify the mapping inside the file:

<!--#info element=TagName map_to="FieldName"-->

EXPORT

By default the module exports all (both) it's functions. If you only want one, or none use

use XML::DTDParser qw(ParseDTD);
or
use XML::DTDParser qw();

ParseDTD

$DTD = ParseDTD $DTDtext;

Parses the $DTDtext and creates a data structure. If the $DTDtext contains some <!ENTITY ... SYSTEM "..."> declarations those are read and parsed as needed. The paths are relative to current directory.

The module currently doesn't support URLs here yet.

ParseDTDFile

$DTD = ParseDTDFile $DTDfile;

Parses the contents of $DTDfile and creates a data structure. If the $DTDfile contains some <!ENTITY ... SYSTEM "..."> declarations those are read and parsed as needed. The paths are relative to the $DTDfile.

The module currently doesn't support URLs here yet.

FindDTDRoot

$DTD = ParseDTD $DTDtext;
@roots = FindDTDRoot $DTD;

Returns all tags that have no parent. There could be several such tags defined by the DTD. Especialy if it used some common includes.

AUTHOR

Jenda@Krynicky.cz http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2002 Jan Krynicky <Jenda@Krynicky.cz>. All rights reserved.

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