Perl

Removing / Deleting Child Nodes from XML

See more XML Examples

Demonstrates various methods for removing child nodes from an XML document.

The input XML, available at http://www.chilkatsoft.com/data/fruit.xml, is this:

<root>
    <fruit color="red">apple</fruit>
    <fruit color="green">pear</fruit>
    <veg color="orange">carrot</veg>
    <meat animal="cow">beef</meat>
    <xyz>
        <fruit color="blue">blueberry</fruit>
        <veg color="green">broccoli</veg>
    </xyz>
    <fruit color="purple">grape</fruit>
    <cheese color="yellow">cheddar</cheese>
</root>

Chilkat2 Perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

my $xml = Chilkat2::Xml->new;

# The sample input XML is available at http://www.chilkatsoft.com/data/fruit.xml
my $success = $xml->LoadXmlFile('fruit.xml');
if (!$success) {
    print $xml->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

# The RemoveChild method removes (discards) all direct
# children having the specified tag:
$xml->RemoveChild('fruit');

# Show the resulting XML:
print "Result with all direct children having a tag equal to \"fruit\" removed:\n";
print $xml->GetXml(), "\n";

# The XML with the "fruit" direct children removed is shown below:
# Notice that the "fruit" node beneath "xyz" was not removed.
# This correct because it was not a direct child of the calling node.

# <root>
#     <veg color="orange">carrot</veg>
#     <meat animal="cow">beef</meat>
#     <xyz>
#         <fruit color="blue">blueberry</fruit>
#         <veg color="green">broccoli</veg>
#     </xyz>
#     <cheese color="yellow">cheddar</cheese>
# </root>

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Restore the original XML:
$success = $xml->LoadXmlFile('fruit.xml');

# The RemoveChildWithContent method removes the child
# having the exact content specified, regardless of the tag.
# For example:
$xml->RemoveChildWithContent('pear');

# Show the resulting XML:
print "Result with the node containing \"pear\" removed:\n";
print $xml->GetXml(), "\n";

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Restore the original XML:
$success = $xml->LoadXmlFile('fruit.xml');

# The RemoveChildByIndex method removes the Nth direct
# child.  Indexing begins at 0.  The "xyz" child is at index 4:
$xml->RemoveChildByIndex(4);

# Show the resulting XML:
# Notice that the entire "xyz" subtree is removed.
print "Result with the node at index 4 removed:\n";
print $xml->GetXml(), "\n";

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Restore the original XML:
$success = $xml->LoadXmlFile('fruit.xml');

# Navigate to the node with tag "xyz";
my $xyz = $xml->FindChild('xyz');

# Remove the "xyz" subtree making it it's own XML document
# with the "xyz" node at the root:
$xyz->RemoveFromTree();

# Show both XML documents:
print $xyz->GetXml(), "\n";
print $xml->GetXml(), "\n";

# Also, the TreeId property is an integer value assigned
# to nodes in an XML document.  All nodes belonging to
# the same XML document will have the same TreeId.
# Notice that the "xyz" node now has a different TreeId:
print 'xyz TreeId = ', $xyz->TreeId, "\n";
print 'xml TreeId = ', $xml->TreeId, "\n";