How can I make this xml handling PHP script faster?

[WStudio]

I read the tutorial, "Handling XML Data" and created this script from it. Excellent tutorial by the way

 

Here is my script:

<?php
// load SimpleXML
$fx = new SimpleXMLElement('http://www.boj.org.jm/uploads/fxrates.xml', null, true);

echo '<table><tr class="fx_header"><th class="fx_date">';
echo $fx->US[0]->DATE;
echo '</th><th class="fx_buy">Buy</th><th class="fx_sell">Sell</th></tr><tr class="fx_us"><td class="fx_legend">USD (&#36;)</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->US[0]->BUY;
echo '</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->US[0]->SELL;
echo '</td></tr><tr class="fx_cad"><td class="fx_legend">CAD (&#36;)</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->CAD[0]->BUY;
echo '</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->CAD[0]->SELL;
echo '</td></tr><tr class="fx_gbp"><td class="fx_legend">GBP (&#163;)</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->GBP[0]->BUY;
echo '</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->GBP[0]->SELL;
echo '</td></tr></table>';
?>

 

This is the XML file that the script is reading from: http://www.boj.org.jm/uploads/fxrates.xml

 

This is the result page (which is just the way it should look): http://projects.wstudiographics.com/ewl/boj/fxrates.php

 

It works very well, but it take a bit of time to return the result. I think it's because of how the XML file data was set up. The thing is that I have no control over the xml data. I am only allowed to read it. I only need the first or rather latest instance of the data.

 

Any help on this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advanced.

 

Winchester (WStudio)

[WStudio]

Is there someone that can help me with? Pretty please? 

[ram4nd]

for making it faster you would have to edit your library... or cache the feeds

[WStudio]

for making it faster you would have to edit your library... or cache the feeds

 

Hello Ram4nd.. Thank you very much for responding. I'm very new to php. In fact I'm more of a designer and not so much a developer. Could you explain a little about how I should go about this? Could you point me to some scripts that I could learn from?

 

I was thinking, I could find a way to copy the xml data to another xml file on my server and have the script take the info from there. I'm thinking I will need a cron job to have the local xml file update daily. Does this sound like a practical and do-able solution?

[kenrbnsn]

Since you only need the most recent quotes, read those lines into a string and then parse the string. It should be much faster.

 

Try:

<?php
$i = 0;
$fp = fopen('http://www.boj.org.jm/uploads/fxrates.xml','r');
$tmp = '';
while ($i < 16 && !feof($fp)) {
        $tmp .= fgets($fp, 100);
        $i++;
}
$tmp .= "</FX>\n";
fclose($fp);
$fx = new SimpleXMLElement($tmp);
echo '<table><tr class="fx_header"><th class="fx_date">';
echo $fx->US[0]->DATE;
echo '</th><th class="fx_buy">Buy</th><th class="fx_sell">Sell</th></tr><tr class="fx_us"><td class="fx_legend">USD (&#36;)</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->US[0]->BUY;
echo '</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->US[0]->SELL;
echo '</td></tr><tr class="fx_cad"><td class="fx_legend">CAD (&#36;)</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->CAD[0]->BUY;
echo '</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->CAD[0]->SELL;
echo '</td></tr><tr class="fx_gbp"><td class="fx_legend">GBP (&#163;)</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->GBP[0]->BUY;
echo '</td><td class="fx_buy_sell">&#36;';
echo $fx->GBP[0]->SELL;
echo '</td></tr></table>';
?>

 

Ken

[MadTechie]

also as its a remote server you may want to consider caching the file, but it depends on your needs

[WStudio]

Hello Ken.. Thank you very much for helping. I will give your codes a try right away

 

Hello MadTechie.. Thanks for your suggestion.. Someone made this suggestion before and I've been searching for pages that will explain how to do this. How would I go about caching the file?

[WStudio]

Thank you very much Ken.. the script worked great and by far much faster than what I did before.