XML Parsing in PHP SimpleXMLSimpleXML was added to PHP5 as an easy way to parse xml. I have found some limitations (IE: when the tagname has a colon in it). For those cases, there are other xml parsers to use.
The two main functions for SimpleXML are simplexml_load_string and simplexml_load_file. It loads it into a custom SimpleXML object which can be iterated like an array (for container tags) and cast to a string (for text tags). I have included a basic example below. $xml_str=''; $xml_str.="<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?>"; $xml_str.="<request>"; $xml_str.= "<list_title>Must Read Books</list_title>"; $xml_str.= "<books>"; $xml_str.= "<book>To Kill a Mockingbird</book>"; $xml_str.= "<book>The Hobbit</book>"; $xml_str.= "<book>War and Peace</book>"; $xml_str.= "</books>"; $xml_str.="</request>"; $xml_parsed = simplexml_load_string($xml_str); echo "<hr>"; echo "<pre>"; print_r($xml_parsed); echo "</pre>"; echo "<hr>"; echo "<pre>"; var_dump($xml_parsed); echo "</pre>"; echo "<hr>"; echo "<br>list_title:".$xml_parsed->list_title; foreach($xml_parsed->books->book as $b) echo "<br>book: ".$b; ?> outputs: SimpleXMLElement Object
( [list_title] => Must Read Books [books] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [book] => Array ( [0] => To Kill a Mockingbird [1] => The Hobbit [2] => War and Peace ) ) ) -------------------- object(SimpleXMLElement)#1 (2) { ["list_title"]=> string(15) "Must Read Books" ["books"]=> object(SimpleXMLElement)#2 (1) { ["book"]=> array(3) { [0]=> string(21) "To Kill a Mockingbird" [1]=> string(10) "The Hobbit" [2]=> string(13) "War and Peace" } } } -------------------- list_title:Must Read Books book: To Kill a Mockingbird book: The Hobbit book: War and Peace Note: To access individual elements you can do $xml_parsed->books->book[0] and $xml_parsed->books->book[1]. Also Note: The document tag (in this case 'request') is totally absorbed into the data structure, do you never need to do anything like echo $xml_parsed->request->list_title; | Related Articles php Calculate Script Duration in PHP and... Generate CSV Spreadsheet with PHP Generate PDFs with PHP Generate XLS Spreadsheet files with ... How to properly escape inline javasc... HTML Table Row Highlight PHP - Resize an Image with GD PHP Calculate Duration of MP3 PHP Create Zip file PHP mail Function With Attachments |
©2010, Zedwood Digital