---
name: "XML::Parser::Style::Tree"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "perl-xml-parser"
version: "2.59-2"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/XML::Parser::Style::Tree"
---

# XML::Parser::Style::Tree(3pm)

Tree style parser

## NAME

XML::Parser::Style::Tree - Tree style parser

## SYNOPSIS

```
  use XML::Parser;
  my $p = XML::Parser->new(Style => 'Tree');
  my $tree = $p->parsefile('foo.xml');
```

## DESCRIPTION

This module implements XML::Parser's Tree style parser.

When parsing a document, `parse()` will return a parse tree for the document. Each node in the tree takes the form of a tag, content pair. Text nodes are represented with a pseudo-tag of "0" and the string that is their content. For elements, the content is an array reference. The first item in the array is a (possibly empty) hash reference containing attributes. The remainder of the array is a sequence of tag-content pairs representing the content of the element.

So for example the result of parsing:

```
  <foo><head id="a">Hello <em>there</em></head><bar>Howdy<ref/></bar>do</foo>
```

would be:

```
             Tag   Content
  ==================================================================
  [foo, [{}, head, [{id => "a"}, 0, "Hello ",  em, [{}, 0, "there"]],
              bar, [         {}, 0, "Howdy",  ref, [{}]],
                0, "do"
        ]
  ]
```

The root document "foo", has 3 children: a "head" element, a "bar" element and the text "do". After the empty attribute hash, these are represented in it's contents by 3 tag-content pairs.

### Entity Expansion

The underlying Expat parser always expands predefined XML entity references (`"&lt;"`, `"&gt;"`, `"&amp;"`, `"&quot;"`, `"&apos;"`) in both text content and attribute values before they reach the Tree style handlers. This is required by the XML specification and cannot be prevented. For example, `"&lt;"` in the source XML will appear as `"<"` in the resulting tree structure.

If you need access to the original unexpanded text, consider using the handler-based API with the `"original_string"` method on the Expat object instead of the Tree style.