NAME

XML::Atom::Syndication::Element - a class representing a tag element in an Atom syndication feed with an XPath-esque interface.

DESCRIPTION

This module is a simple class for representing a tag element in an Atom syndication feed parse tree that implements an XPath-esque interface for query the tree of elements and retreiving data.

XML::Parser::Style::Elemental dynamically constructs the extremely rudimentary XML::Atom::Syndication::Document and XML::Atom::Syndication::Characters packages. The Element object is marginally more sophisticated and required something a bit more specific to implement and manage the XPath interface and underlying functions.

METHODS

XML::Atom::Syndication::Element->new

Constructor method. Creates an instance and returns it.

$atom->name([$name])

Returns the extended name (Namespace URI and tag name) of the element. Sets the value when an optional parameter is passed.

$atom->parent([$element])

Returns a reference to the element's parent object in the parse tree. Sets the value when an optional parameter is passed.

$atom->contents([\@children])

Returns an array reference to the element's child objects in the parse tree. Sets the value when an optional array reference parameter is passed.

$atom->attributes([\%attr])

Returns a hash reference of the element's attributes. Sets the value when an optional hash reference parameter is passed.

$atom->text_value

This method returns all of the sibling character data (read: the text and whitespace between this element's start and end tag with the tags stripped) as a single string.

$atom->query($xpath)

Take XPath-esque query string and returns an array of matching elements or undef if nothing could be matched. These objects will be XML::Atom::Syndication elements except for the root element which will be a (dynamically generated) XML::Atom::Syndication::Document object.

This is not a full XPath implementation. For more details on the supported syntax see the documentation for Class::XPath.

$atom->xpath

Returns a unique XPath identifier string for the element.

SEE ALSO

XML::Parser::Style::Elemental, XML::Atom, Class::XPath

LICENSE

The software is released under the Artistic License. The terms of the Artistic License are described at http://www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html.

AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT

Except where otherwise noted, XML::Atom::Syndication::Element is Copyright 2004, Timothy Appnel, cpan@timaoutloud.org. All rights reserved.