Xmldoom::doc::UsingSQLTranslator -- How to use the SQL::Translator to work with your database.xml.
Xmldoom now comes with some add-ons to SQL::Translator that allow you to convert between your database.xml and many other formats.
Installing Xmldoom will also install some additional modules under SQL::Translator, which *should* allow you to simply use the command lines tools provided by SQL::Translator to read/write files in the database.xml format. Unfortunately, there is a bug in SQL::Translator where it won't find a Parser or Producer module automatically unless it is in the same directory on disk. This isn't a problem if you install both Xmldoom and SQL::Translator from CPAN at the same time. However it can be a problem if both are installed from different sources (ie. vendor packages and CPAN) or on opposite sides of Perl version updates.
To check what Parsers and Producers are available to SQL::Translator run:
drs@mork ~ $ sqlt -l Parsers: Access DB2 DB2-Grammar DBI DBI-DB2 DBI-MySQL DBI-PostgreSQL DBI-SQLite DBI-Sybase Excel MySQL Oracle PostgreSQL SQLite Storable Sybase XML XML-SQLFairy XML-Xmldoom YAML xSV Producers: ClassDBI Diagram Dumper GraphViz HTML MySQL Oracle POD PostgreSQL SQLServer SQLite Storable Sybase TT-Base TT-Table TTSchema XML XML-SQLFairy XML-Xmldoom YAML
Look for the XML-Xmldoom in the list. This means that everything is good!
To generate a database.xml from your MySQL database, you can do for example:
sqlt --parser DBI --dsn dbi:mysql:dbname --db-user username --db-password secret --producer XML-Xmldoom >database.xml
To generate MySQL create script from your database.xml, do:
sqlt --parser XML-Xmldoom --producer MySQL database.xml >schema.sql
See the SQL::Translator documentation for more information on how to use this and the other command lines tools.
Xmldoom also ships with its own custom command line tool which basically uses SQL::Translator under the hood but provides alot less features than any of its command lines tools. Its purpose is simply to do the common tasks with a much simplified and Xmldoom-specific interface. It also adds the ability to filter out all but a select number of tables and to ignore foreign-key declarations.
To generate a database.xml from your MySQL database for a specific list of tables, you can do for example:
xmldoom-schema create --parser DBI --dsn dbi:mysql:dbname -u username -p secret -t table1 -t table2 >database.xml
To generate MySQL create script from your database.xml for a specific list of tables without any FOREIGN KEY declarations, do:
xmldoom-schema convert --producer MySQL -t table1 -t table2 --drop-foreign-keys -D database.xml >schema.sql
The generated XML is admittedly pretty horrendous but I didn't want to add needless dependancies and complexity to what is an otherwise very simple tool. But if this to ever edited and read by humans you should probably use an XML beautifier. I suggest 'xmlpretty' which comes with the XML::Handler::YAWriter CPAN distribution. These are the options that we use:
xmlpretty --PrettyWhiteIndent --CatchEmptyElement --NoProlog
To install Xmldoom, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Xmldoom
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Xmldoom
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.