XML Database to replace MySQL

[Arkane]

Hey,

 

I'm trying to sort out a problem I'm having with my site.  Currently its all updated manually, and its becomming too much for me.  all the info I want on the page is currently kept in an xml file, so I'm hoping to use this to similar ways as SQL.  Obviously I could just use SQL, but I can neither afford this, nor do I want to copy all of the data (currently 3000 items+) into another database.

 

the data is all similar to this

<list>
<games>
	<game>
		<number>2</number>
		<title>Game Title</title>
		<comment></comment>
	</game>
</games>
</list>

 

What i'm looking for is the hopes that I can use some form of loop to get the data from this.  The number nodes are all unique, so what I want is to loop with this so that I can display the data from a certain number to 100 above it.

 

Can anyone tell me how to do this?  I realise I'm basically asking people to do the code for me, but I'm just going soooo slowly at picking it up that I really need something to learn it from.

 

Thanks very much to any who can help

[Mchl]

How can you not afford MySQL? It's free... Or if you can't afford MySQL powered hosting, there's always sqlite.

 

For parsing XML files SimpleXML is very good solution.

[Arkane]

I was meaning I can't afford the MySQL hosting... and I keep breaking it on my computer.

 

I looked at SimpleXML, but I didn't think it will work, because some of the title files contain colons and things.  Plus, I am completely new to php, and don't really understand much of it to actually learn without examlpe... although I am trying, especially since I realise how ignorant that comment sounds.

[Mchl]

because some of the title files contain colons and things.

 

If the files are not valid XML you will have problems anyway.

 

Take a look at the examples in manual, and give SimpleXML a try.

[Arkane]

OK.  i've had things working with colons already, but are they not actually valid XML?  The stuff I was using was really picky about a lot of things, but its worked fine with htose so far.

 

I'm trying the tutorials, http://uk2.php.net/SimpleXML, but I'm not having any luck.  On the very first one I get an error on line 5 (from a straight copy/paste job - figured it would be easiest for me to learn through example).

[Mchl]

Post your code and error message and we will try to figure it out.

 

Colons should not break XML, but other characters (like & < > etc) could. You can enclose data in CDATA section to avoid that.

[Arkane]

I did know about the & screwing things up... I found that out the hard way.  I'll look into CDATA - cheers man, that will help me with another unrealted (kinda) problem.

 

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_SL in E:\domains\a\arkanes-arkade.co.uk\user\htdocs\test\books.php on line 5

 

the code is literally a straight copy of the tutorial, and I also have the books.xml copied, and in the same folder as 'books.xml'

<?php  
// load SimpleXML  
$books = new SimpleXMLElement('books.xml', null, true);  
  
echo <<<EOF  
<table>  
    <tr>  
        <th>Title</th>  
        <th>Author</th>  
        <th>Publisher</th>  
        <th>Price at Amazon.com</th>  
        <th>ISBN</th>  
    </tr>  
  
EOF;  
foreach($books as $book) // loop through our books  
{  
    echo <<<EOF  
    <tr>  
        <td>{$book->title}</td>  
        <td>{$book->author}</td>  
        <td>{$book->publisher}</td>  
        <td>\${$book->amazon_price}</td>  
        <td>{$book['isbn']}</td>  
    </tr>  
  
EOF;  
}  
echo '</table>';  
?>

 

I also double checked the phpinfo for my site, and I have SimpleXML '$Revision: 1.151.2.22.2.39 $', with Schema support enabled.

[Mchl]

I'm not sure if you can echo heredoc... And it seems that <<<EOF is not recognized as start of string (T_SL is 'shift left' or << operator) It works (kind of) when I change it to <<<XML

 

Why not do it this way?

 

<?php  
// load SimpleXML  
$books = new SimpleXMLElement('books.xml', null, true);  
  
?>
<table>  
    <tr>  
        <th>Title</th>  
        <th>Author</th>  
        <th>Publisher</th>  
        <th>Price at Amazon.com</th>  
        <th>ISBN</th>  
    </tr>  
  
<?php
foreach($books as $book) // loop through our books  
{  ?>
    <tr>  
        <td><?php echo $book->title ?></td>  
        <td><?php echo $book->author ?></td>  
        <td><?php echo $book->publisher ?></td>  
        <td>$<?php echo $book->amazon_price ?></td>  
        <td><?php echo $book['isbn'] ?></td>  
    </tr>  
<?php  
}  
echo '</table>';  
?>

[Arkane]

thanks man, that does it perfectly.

Now I'm just looking for a different tutorial to get some more things figured out.

[Arkane]

OK, heres the deal.  Now that I've got that figured out, I have my xml parsing as needed, using

$titles = $books->xpath('games/game');  
foreach($titles as $title)

Like I said though, theres 3000 items in this - I'm intending to use $_GET to give a start number, but can anyone tell me how to do a for of only 100 times, instead of 3000.  Is there a way to do this, either by specifying the startnum and number of times to do it, or the start and finish numbers?

 

Cheers