How do I use Perl's XML::Twig to count multiple tags in XML?

Question

I am using XML::Twig to parse my input xml using Perl. I need to extact a particular node in this XML and validate that node to see if it has multiple <p> tags and then count words in those P tags. For example:

<XML> 
<name>
</name>
<address>
<p id="1">a b c d </p>
<p id="2">y y y </p>
</address>
</XML>

Output:

Address has 2 paragraph tags with 7 words.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Here is one way to do it:

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Twig;

my $xfile = q(
<XML>  
<name> 
</name> 
<address> 
<p id="1">a b c d </p> 
<p id="2">y y y </p> 
</address> 
</XML> 
);

my $t = XML::Twig->new(
    twig_handlers => { 'address/p' => \&addr}
);
my $pcnt = 0;
my $wcnt = 0;
$t->parse($xfile);
print "Address has $pcnt paragraph tags with $wcnt words.\n";

sub addr {
    my ($twig, $add) = @_;
    my @words = split /\s+/, $add->text();
    $wcnt += scalar @words;
    $pcnt++;
}

__END__

Address has 2 paragraph tags with 7 words.

XML::Twig has a dedicated website with documentation and a Tutorial to describe the handler technique used above.