Text::vFile::asData(3)

NAME
Text::vFile::asData - parse vFile formatted files into data structures

SYNOPSIS
  use Text::vFile::asData;
  open my $fh, "foo.ics"
    or die "couldn't open ics: $!";
  my $data = Text::vFile::asData->new->parse( $fh );

DESCRIPTION
Text::vFile::asData reads vFile format files, such as vCard (RFC 2426) and vCalendar (RFC 2445).

DATA STRUCTURE
A vFile contains one or more objects, delimited by BEGIN and END tags.

  BEGIN:VCARD
  ...
  END:VCARD

Objects may contain sub-objects;

  BEGIN:VCALENDAR
  ...
  BEGIN:VEVENT
  ...
  END:VEVENT
  ...
  ENV:VCALENDAR

Each object consists of one or more properties. Each property consists of a name, zero or more optional parameters, and then a value. This fragment:

  DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:19970317

identifies a property with the name, "DSTART", the parameter "VALUE", which has the value "DATE", and the property's value is 19970317. Those of you with an XML bent might find this more recognisable as:

  <dtstart value="date">19970317</dtstart>

The return value from the parse() method is a hash ref.

The top level key, "objects", refers to an array ref. Each entry in the array ref is a hash ref with two or three keys.

The value of the first key, "type", is a string corresponding to the type of the object. E.g., "VCARD", "VEVENT", and so on.

The value of the second key, "properties", is a hash ref, with property names as keys, and an array ref of those property values. It's an array ref, because some properties may appear within an object multiple times with different values. For example;

  BEGIN:VEVENT
  ATTENDEE;CN="Nik Clayton":mailto:nik@FreeBSD.org
  ATTENDEE;CN="Richard Clamp":mailto:richardc@unixbeard.net
  ...
  END:VEVENT

Each entry in the array ref is a hash ref with one or two keys.

The first key, "value", corresponds to the property's value.

The second key, "param", contains a hash ref of the property's parameters. Keys in this hash ref are the parameter's name, the value is the parameter's value. (If you enable the "preserve_params" option there is an additional key populated, called "params". It is an array ref of hash refs, each hash ref is the parameter's name and the parameter's value - these are collected in the order they are encountered to prevent hash collisions as seen in some vCard files) line.)

The third key in the top level "objects" hash ref is "objects". If it exists, it indicates that sub-objects were found. The value of this key is an array ref of sub-objects, with identical keys and behaviour to that of the top level "objects" key. This recursive structure continues, nesting as deeply as there were sub-objects in the input file.

The "bin/v2yaml" script that comes with this distribution displays the format of a vFile as YAML. "t/03usage.t" has examples of picking out the relevant information from the data structure.

AUTHORS
Richard Clamp <richardc@unixbeard.net> and Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.org>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2004, 2010, 2013 Richard Clamp and Nik Clayton. All Rights Reserved.

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

CAVEATS
We don't do any decoding of property values, including descaping "\,", we're still undecided as to whether this is a bug.

BUGS
Aside from the TODO list items, none known.

SEE ALSO
Text::vFile - parses to objects, doesn't handle nested items

RFC 2426 - vCard specification

RFC 2445 - vCalendar specification