Data-Dumper-UnDumper/lib/Data/Dumper/UnDumper.pm
package Data::Dumper::UnDumper;
$Data::Dumper::UnDumper::VERSION = '0.02';
# ABSTRACT: load Data::Dumper output, including self-references
use 5.006;
use strict;
use warnings;
=head1 NAME
Data::Dumper::UnDumper - load Dumper output including $VAR1 refs
=head1 SYNOPSIS
Load in a L<Data::Dumper> output via eval, including supporting C<$VAR1>
style references etc as emitted if you don't set the C<Purity> option:
use Data::Dumper::UnDumper;
my $complex_ref = { ... };
my $dumped = Data::Dumper::Dumper($complex_ref);
my $undumped = Data::Dumper::UnDumper::undumper($dumped);
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Firstly, a safety warning: loading L<Data::Dumper> output, which is designed
to be C<eval>ed, is a big safety risk if the data comes from an untrusted
source. It's evaled as Perl code, so it can do anything you could write a
Perl program to. Future versions of this module may use L<Safe> to mitigate
that risk somewhat, but it's still there - to support object references,
C<bless> would have to be allowed.
So, given the choice, what should you use instead? Any of the many serialisation
options that don't serialise as code - for e.g. JSON, YAML, etc.
I wrote this module, though, because I didn't have a choice - I was receiving
L<Data::Dumper> output which had been written to a log in the past by some code,
without using the C<<$Data::Dumper::PURITY>> setting, so it included C<$VAR1>
references, including re-used L<JSON::PP> objects.
This has been lightly tested with the default output from C<Data::Dumper::Dump()>.
It's quite likely that you could have L<Data::Dumper> generate output this will
not handle by setting some of the dumping options.
=head1 SUBROUTINES
=head2 undumper
Given the output of L<Data::Dumper>'s C<Dumper> / C<Dump> method, "undump"
it, deserialising it back in to a Perl scalar/object, handling `$VAR1`
references.
=cut
sub undumper {
my $dumper_in = shift;
# First, remove the leading $VAR1 assignment, we're going to assign to
# our own var.
$dumper_in =~ s{^\$VAR1 = }{};
# Next, for all the VAR1 refs, turn them into a string we can eval later
# They'll turn into a quoted form of e.g. "DUMPERREF:$_->{'foo'}" or whatever
$dumper_in =~ s{\$VAR1->(.+)(,|$)}{
my $cap = $1;
my $end = $2;
$cap =~ s/\{/\\{/g;
$cap =~ s/\}/\\}/g;
"q{DUMPERREF:\$obj->$cap}".$end
}xge;
# Right, now we can eval it (FIXME: do this as safely as an eval can be done,
# e.g. using Safe)
my $obj = eval $dumper_in;
# Firstly, if the Data::Dumper-ed thing was just e.g. a plain scalar, we
# have no more work to do
if (!ref $obj) {
return $obj;
}
# Start recursing (passing the ref as both args, this first call will
# then start walking and recursing
_recurse_resolve($obj, $obj);
return $obj;
}
# Given a reference to the object we undumpered walk through its values
# (array / hash values), recursing whenever another level is encountered.
sub _recurse_resolve {
my ($value, $obj, $depth) = @_;
if ($depth++ > 50) {
die "Too many levels of recursion resolving this dumper input "
. " - stopping at depth $depth on value $value";
}
if (ref $value eq 'ARRAY') {
for (@$value) { _recurse_resolve($_, $obj, $depth); }
} elsif (ref $value eq 'HASH') {
for (values %$value) { _recurse_resolve($_, $obj, $depth); }
} else {
# A plain value, resolve it if it's a DUMPERREF
if ($value && $value =~ /^DUMPERREF:(.+)$/) {
# We need to unescape the escaped braces first, then what we're
# left with should be safe to eval (FIXME prob use Safe here?)
my $ref = $1;
$ref =~ s/\\\{/\{/g;
$ref =~ s/\\\}/\}/g;
$value = eval $ref;
# If the value we get is a token, then this was a ref to another
# ref, and we need to resolve that too
if ($value =~ /^DUMPERREF:(.+)$/) {
_recurse_resolve($value, $obj, $depth);
}
$_[0] = $value;
}
}
}
=head1 SEE ALSO
=over
=item L<Data::Undump>
Doesn't support cyclical references, blessed objects.
=item L<Data::Undump::PPI>
Safer as it uses PPI not C<eval>, but doesn't support blessed objects
or refs.
=item plain old eval
For simple Data::Dumper output you can of course just C<eval> it, but that
falls down when the output includes references to other parts of the object
e.g. C<< 'foo' => $VAR1->{'bar'} >>
=back
=head1 AUTHOR
David Precious (BIGPRESH), C<< <davidp@preshweb.co.uk> >>
=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2023-2024 by David Precious
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.
=head1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
=cut
1; # End of Data::Dumper::UnDumper