[SOLVED] How to parse the CAP id instead of a hashed value with Weather::NOAA::Alert in Perl

How to parse the CAP id instead of a hashed value with Weather::NOAA::Alert in Perl

Thanks to the accepted answer in the following solution, I'm now able to extract most of the values I need from NOAA alerts: perl Data::Dumper to extract key values

I would like to parse the "CAP id" as well, however when I try, I receive a hashed value instead of the URL.

For example, using the previously mentioned thread, what I would like to parse is: http://alerts.weather.gov/cap/wwacapget.php?x=TX12516CBE9400.FloodWarning.12516CC068C0TX.MAFFLWMAF.f21e7ce7cf8e930ab73a110c4d912576

What I get instead: HASH(0x26384c0)

I imagine this is only possible by modifying alert.pm: https://github.com/mikegrb/Weather-NOAA-Alert/blob/master/lib/Weather/NOAA/Alert.pm and if I've read enough into the issue, it may be on account of XML::Simple?

Typically, I would use XPath to parse XML like data, but for this ATOM format I'm lost.

Ultimately, I'm simply looking to add the parsed variables to an SQL database. With NOAA looking to transition from CAP v1.1 to v1.2 (when, I have no clue), perhaps I should be looking at using something else.

Solution

In your previous code, you can get the single key of the hashref $events->{'TXC301'} like this:

my @keys = keys %{$events->{'TXC301'}}
my $alert_url = $keys[0]

Now $alert_url should hold the URL you were mentioning.

Does this answer your question?