Methods

NAME

XML::LibXML::Text - The DOM Text Node Class

synopsis

 use XML::LibXML

 $text = XML::LibXML::Text->new( $content ); 
 $nodedata = $text->data;
 $text->setData( $text_content );
 $text->substringData($offset, $length);
 $text->appendData( $somedata );
 $text->insertData($offset, $string);
 $text->deleteData($offset, $length);
 $text->deleteDataString($remstring, $all);
 $text->replaceData($offset, $length, $string);
 $text->replaceDataString($old, $new, $flag);
 $text->replaceDataRegEx( $search_cond, $replace_cond, $reflags );

DESCRIPTION

Different to the DOM specification XML::LibXML implements the text node as the base class of all character data node. Therefor there exists no CharacterData class. This allow one to use all methods that are available for textnodes as well for Comments or CDATA-sections.

Methods

new

The constuctor of the class. It creates an unbound text node.

data

Although there exists the nodeValue attribute in the Node class, the DOM specification defines data as a separate attribute. XML::LibXML implements these two attributes not as different attributes, but as aliases, such as libxml2 does. Therefore $text->data and $text->nodeValue will have the same result and are not different entities.

setData($string)

This function sets or replaces text content to a node. The node has to be of the type "text", "cdata" or "comment".

substringData($offset,$length)

Extracts a range of data from the node. (DOM Spec) This function takes the two parameters $offset and $length and returns the substring if available.

If the node contains no data or $offset referes to an nonexisting string index, this function will return undef. If $length is out of range substringData will return the data starting at $offset instead of causing an error.

appendData($string)

Appends a string to the end of the existing data. If the current text node contains no data, this function has the same effect as setData.

insertData($offset,$string)

Inserts the parameter $string at the given $offset of the existing data of the node. This operation will not remove existing data, but change the order of the existing data.

The $offset has to be a positive value. If $offset is out of range, insertData will have the same behaviour as appendData.

deleteData($offset, $length)

This method removes a chunk from the existing node data at the given offset. The $length parameter tells, how many characters should be removed from the string.

deleteDataString($string, [$all])

This method removes a chunk from the existing node data. Since the DOM spec is quite unhandy if you already know which string to remove from a text node, this method allows more perlish code :)

The functions takes two parameters: $string and optional the $all flag. If $all is not set, undef or 0, deleteDataString will remove only the first occourance of $string. If $all is TRUE deleteDataString will remove all occourences of $string from the node data.

replaceData($offset, $length, $string)

The DOM style version to replace node data.

replaceDataString($oldstring, $newstring, [$all])

The more programmer friendly version of replaceData() :)

Instead of giving offsets and length one can specify the exact string ($oldstring) to be replaced. Additionally the $all flag allows to replace all occourences of $oldstring.

replaceDataRegEx( $search_cond, $replace_cond, $reflags )

This method replaces the node's data by a simple regular expression. Optional, this function allows to pass some flags that will be added as flag to the replace statement.

NOTE: This is a shortcut for

 my $datastr = $node->getData();
 $datastr =~ s/somecond/replacement/g; # 'g' is just an example for any flag
 $node->setData( $datastr );
                    
This function can make things easier to read for
simple replacements. For more complex variants it
is recommented to use the code snippet above.

AUTHOR

Matt Sergeant, Christian Glahn

VERSION