Google Hacks

NoXML, Another SOAP::Lite Alternative

NoXML is a regular expressions-based, XML Parser-free drop-in alternative to SOAP::Lite.

XML jockeys might well want to avert their eyes for this one. What is herein suggested is something just so preposterous that it just might prove useful—and indeed it does. NoXML is a drop-in alternative to SOAP::Lite. As its name suggests, this home-brewed module doesn’t make use of an XML parser of any kind, relying instead on some dead-simple regular expressions and other bits of programmatic magic.

If you have only a basic Perl installation at your disposal and are lacking both the SOAP::Lite [Hack #52] and XML::Parser Perl modules, NoXML will do in a pinch, playing nicely with just about every Perl hack in this book.

Tip

As any XML guru will attest, there’s simply no substitute for an honest-to-goodness XML parser. And they’d be right. There are encoding and hierarchy issues that a regular expression-based parser simply can’t fathom. NoXML is simplistic at best. That said, it does what needs doing, the very essence of “hacking.”

Best of all, NoXML can fill in for SOAP::Lite with little more than a two-line alteration to the target hack.

The Code

The heart of this hack is NoXML.pm, which should be saved into the same directory as your hacks themselves.

# NoXML.pm # NoXML [pronounced "no xml"] is a dire-need drop-in # replacement for SOAP::Lite designed for Google Web API hacking. package NoXML; use strict; no strict "refs"; # LWP for making HTTP requests, ...