Perl WWW:Mechanize Accessing data in a hash reference

Question

I have a question I'm hoping you could help with?

This is the last part I need help with in understanding hash references

Code:

my $content_lengths; # this is at the top
foreach my $url ( # ... more stuff

# compare
if ( $mech->response->header('Content-Length') != $content_length ) {
  print "$child_url: different content length: $content_length vs "
    . $mech->response->header('Content-Length') . "!\n";

  # store the urls that are found to have different content
  # lengths to the base url only if the same url has not already been stored
  $content_lengths->{$url}->{'different'}->{$child_url} = $mech->response->header('Content-Length');

} elsif ( $mech->response->header('Content-Length') == $content_length ) {
  print "Content lengths are the same\n";

  # store the urls that are found to have the same content length as the base
  # url only if the same url has not already been stored
  $content_lengths->{$url}->{'equal'}->{$child_url} = $mech->response->header('Content-Length');
}

What it looked like using Data::Dumper

$VAR1 = {
      'http://www.superuser.com/' => {
                                       'difference' => {
                                                         'http://www.superuser.com/questions' => '10735',
                                                         'http://www.superuser.com/faq' => '13095'
                                                       },
                                       'equal' => {
                                                    'http://www.superuser.com/ ' => '20892'
                                                  }
                                     },
      'http://www.stackoverflow.com/' => {
                                           'difference' => {
                                                             'http://www.stackoverflow.com/faq' => '13015',
                                                             'http://www.stackoverflow.com/questions' => '10506'
                                                           },
                                           'equal' => {
                                                        'http://www.stackoverflow.com/ ' => '33362'
                                                      }
                                         }
    };

What I need help with:

I need help understanding the various ways of accessing the different parts in the hash reference and using them to do things, such as print them.

So for example how do I print all the $url from the hash reference (i.e from Data::Dumper that will be http://www.superuser.com/ and http://www.stackoverflow.com/)

and how do I print all the $child_url or a particular one/subset from $child_url and so on?

Your help with this is much appreciated,

thanks a lot

Answer 1

You can navigate your hashref thusly:

$hashref->{key1}{key2}{keyN};

For example, if you want the superuser equal branch:

my $urlArrayref = $hashref->{'http://www.superuser.com/'}{'equal'};

More to the point, to print the urls (first level key) of the hashref, you would do:

foreach my $key ( keys( %{$hashref} ) ) {
    print( "key is '$key'\n" );
}

Then if you wanted the second level keys:

foreach my $firstLevelKey ( keys( %{$hashref} ) ) {
    print( "first level key is '$firstLevelKey'\n" );
    foreach my $secondLevelKey ( keys( %{$hashref->{$firstLevelKey}} ) ) {
        print( "\tfirst level key is '$secondLevelKey'\n" );
    }
}

And so forth...

----- EDIT -----

This is working sample code from your example above:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $content_lengths = {
    'http://www.superuser.com/' => {
        'difference' => {
            'http://www.superuser.com/questions' => '10735',
            'http://www.superuser.com/faq' => '13095'
        },
        'equal' => {
            'http://www.superuser.com/ ' => '20892'
        }
    },
    'http://www.stackoverflow.com/' => {
        'difference' => {
            'http://www.stackoverflow.com/faq' => '13015',
            'http://www.stackoverflow.com/questions' => '10506'
        },
        'equal' => {
            'http://www.stackoverflow.com/ ' => '33362'
        }
    }
};

foreach my $key1 ( keys( %{$content_lengths} ) ) {
    print( "$key1\n" );
    foreach my $key2 ( keys( %{$content_lengths->{$key1}} ) ) {
        print( "\t$key2\n" );
        foreach my $key3 ( keys( %{$content_lengths->{$key1}{$key2}} ) ) {
            print( "\t\t$key3\n" );
        }
    }
}

Which results in this output:

http://www.superuser.com/
        difference
                http://www.superuser.com/questions
                http://www.superuser.com/faq
        equal
                http://www.superuser.com/
http://www.stackoverflow.com/
        difference
                http://www.stackoverflow.com/faq
                http://www.stackoverflow.com/questions
        equal
                http://www.stackoverflow.com/