the square brackets create an array reference.
the constructed array contains 5 items.
the first item in the array is undef and the following 4 items are hash references (created by the curly braces).

i assume you can take it from there...

i assume you can take it from there...

You would think, wouldn't you? LOL

It took some work, but I finally figured it out:

$str = decode_json $json;

foreach $key (@{$str}) {
 if ($key->{'name'}) {
  print $key->{'name'} . "\n";
 }
}

You would think, wouldn't you? LOL

LOL

It took some work, but I finally figured it out

excellent!
thanks for showing your work...

I have a follow up question on this.

At this point I have:

# spaces added for readability
# $json really comes from the query string
$json = qq~
[
 {
  'name' => '20221020_164047.jpg',
  'uuid' => '43f07ec4-17a7-4874-bb84-66a0f002f48e'
 },
 {
  'name' => '20221021_144704 (1).jpg',
  'uuid' => '71bba099-2616-4415-b420-0d0d16c19c30'
 }
]
~;

$str = decode_json $json;

foreach $key (@{$str}) {
 if ($key->{'name'}) {
  print $key->{'name'} . "\n";
 }
}

but I've discovered that, if decode_json fails then it's a fatal error for the script!

Can you suggest a way to determine whether $json contains at least one valid {'name'} and {'uuid'} before proceeding? I know that I could check via regex, like:

if ($json =~ /name.+=>.+uuid.+=>/si) {
 $str = decode_json $json;

 foreach $key (@{$str}) {
  if ($key->{'name'}) {
   print $key->{'name'} . "\n";
  }
 }
}

but I'm hoping for something that will only return true if the keys / values are valid.

I thought that JSON::is_bool($json)/ would work, but it returns false (or empty) every time so I guess I misunderstand the purpose of it?

Returns true if the passed scalar represents either JSON::true or JSON::false, two constants that act like 1 and 0 respectively and are also used to represent JSON true and false in Perl strings.

[metacpan.org...]

Update: I also tried if ($str = decode_json $json) { ... } and $str = decode_json $json or die;, but neither prevented a painful death if decode_json failed.

The only solution I'm finding is:

$str = false;
eval { $str = decode_json $json };

if ($str) {
 foreach $key (@{$str}) {
  if ($key->{'name'}) {
   print $key->{'name'} . "\n";
  }
 }
}

using eval creates a new process, so probably not the most efficient solution.

It would definitely be my last resort, but I can't think of any other alternative :-/ Do you have any other suggestions?

I discovered that Try::Tiny is installed on the server, I'm not sure if it's part of the default package but I certainly don't remember installing it myself.
[metacpan.org...]

So another option is:

use Try::Tiny;

$str = false;
try { $str = decode_json $json };

but my benchtest found eval { } to be about 10 times faster, so I'm not sure what the advantage to use Try::Tiny would be.

It kinda sucks that there's no way to modify decode_json so that it warns instead of croaks, but it is what it is :-/