Getting xml using simplexml but how to style it?

[cparekh]

Hi all,

 

I'm using php/simplexml to pull some xml and I'm having trouble styling it - essentially I'm not sure what to do.

 

I've read up on xslt but it seems the call to a xsl document needs to be made from within the feed but what I have is just html from simplexml.

 

How would I apply styling? 

 

This is really something I know very little about so any help or guidance is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

C.

[sloth456]

Difficult to understand exactly what your problem is.

 

But if you're able to parse out the xml then why not echo it out between span tags that you can then apply CSS styling to?

[Yesideez]

As sloth has mentioned, if you can read and parse the XML file then you're almost there.

 

As you're probably aware XML is just plain text with labels saying what the file contains.

 

For example...

<car id="1">
  <color>Red</color>
  <make>Mazda</make>
</car>

 

Here we can see what the data contains but now it's up to you to format this data in your browser. For example:

Car #: 1
Make: Mazda
Color: Red

[cparekh]

Hi,

 

firstly, thanks for responding.

 

I should explain this further - I'm implementing Google Mini search on our site and would like to display the results within the site but not in an iframe as is the popular option.

 

I'm using simplexml to parse the xml and output it e.g.

$xml = simplexml_load_file($xmlfile);
//to get the total number of results
$total = $xml->RES->M;
return $total; 

 

I'm able to style the output as suggested however what I'm missing here is a way to apply the google xslt which contains all the spiffy 'extra' bits like 'related searches' etc.

 

So really my question should have been how would I apply an external xslt to the output? (My apologies, it's only after looking into it further today that I realise what I'm trying to do - total xml dunce)

 

Any guidance is appreciated.

 

C.