NAME

Parse::FieldPath

ABSTRACT

Parses an XPath inspired field list and extracts those fields from an object hierarchy.

Based on the "fields" parameter for the Google+ API: http://developers.google.com/+/api/

SYNOPSIS

Say you have an object, with some sub-objects, that's initialized like this:

my $cow = Cow->new();
$cow->color("black and white");
$cow->tail(Cow::Tail->new(floppy => 1));
$cow->mouth(Cow::Tounge->new(
  tounge => Cow::Tounge->new,
  teeth  => Cow::Teeth->new,
);

And you want a hash containing some of those fields (perhaps to pass to JSON::XS, or something). Then you can do this:

use Parse::FieldPath qw/extract_fields/;

my $cow_hash = extract_fields($cow, "color,tail/floppy");
# $cow_hash is now:
# {
#   color => 'black and white',
#   tail  => {
#     floppy => 1,
#   }
# }

SYNTAX

(To be written)

FUNCTIONS

extract_fields ($object, $field_path)

Parses the field_path and returns the fields requested from $object.

build_tree ($field_path)

Parses the field_path and returns a tree structure describing it.

BUGS / LIMITATIONS

Doesn't support arrays currently

Needs more callbacks

Assumes that objects are blessed hashrefs (which isn't necessarily true)

"field/*" doesn't work very well at present

AUTHOR

Paul Boyd <pboyd@dev3l.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2011 by Paul Boyd.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.