NAME

HTML::DOMbo -- convert between XML::DOM and {XML/HTML}::Element trees

SYNOPSIS

  use HTML::DOMbo;
  use HTML::TreeBuilder;
  my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder->new;
  $tree->parse_from_file('foo.html');
  my $dom_tree = $tree->to_XML_DOM;
  # Now you have a DOM element in $dom_tree!

DESCRIPTION

This class puts a method into HTML::Element called to_XML_DOM, and puts into the class XML::DOM::Node two methods, to_HTML_Element and to_XML_Element.

to_XML_DOM

The class HTML::TreeBuilder robustly produces parse trees of HTML, but the trees are made of HTML::Element objects, not W3C DOM objects. If you want to access a TreeBuilder-made parse tree (in $tree) with a DOM interface, use HTML::DOMbo and then call

  my $dom_tree = $tree->to_XML_DOM;

This returns a new object of the appropriate class (presumably XML::DOM::Element), in a new DOM document, having the same structure and content as the given HTML::TreeBuilder/Element tree. If you want the elements to be instantiated against an existing document object, instead call:

  my $dom_tree = $tree->to_XML_DOM($existing_dom_document);

to_HTML_Element and to_XML_Element

This module provides two experimental methods (in the XML::DOM::Node class) called to_HTML_Element and to_XML_Element, which clone a DOM node (or DOM document, or document fragment) as a new HTML::Element or XML::Element object. You need to have the XML::Element module (from the XML::TreeBuilder dist) installed in order to use the to_XML_Element method.

It is possible for this to throw a fatal exception. And it it possible for this to return a text string instead (if the DOM node given was a text node). Moreover, in list context it may return any number of items, if the source object is a document fragment containing more than one top-level node, or no nodes.

Users are encouraged to report to me any problems (or successes) in using this method. The behavior of this method may change in response to your requests.

SEE ALSO

XML::DOM, HTML::TreeBuilder, HTML::Element, XML::Element.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2000 Sean M. Burke.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Sean M. Burke, <sburke@cpan.org>