Difficulty Pasing XML with PHP

[labiere33]

I've been trying to figure out how to parse an xml file using PHP and to output some HTML.

 

I followed an example from joemarini.com

 

Display a List of Categorized Links with PHP, XML, and SAX

 

The example xml being parsed is only showing tags with attributes, but not with text values within the tag pairs. So I see how to apply the php example to xml that looks like this:

<tagname>
   <tag1 attr="foo">
      <tag2 attr1="one" attr2="two"></tag2>
   </tag1>
</tagname>

but not to xml that looks like this:

<tagname>
   <tag1 attr="foo">
      <tag2 attr1="one" attr2="two">SOME TEXT VALUE ADDED HERE</tag2>
   </tag1>
</tagname>

Basically I want to modify the php example so that it allows me to not only store and do something with the attribute values as it parses, but also the text values between the tag pairs. (Is this what is being called the CDATA everywhere I look?) I have found examples that parse the values between tags and they look very different from the code example I have here that parses attribute values.

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

 

links.php

links.xml

[Barand]

What have you tried?

[Eiseth]

Are you trying to output the whole xml?

 

try DOMDocument()

// if you're getting the xml from outside source use file_get_contents('http://www.example.com');
$xml = <<<EOT
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<tagname>
   <tag1 attr="foo">
      <tag2 attr1="one" attr2="two">SOME TEXT VALUE ADDED HERE</tag2>
   </tag1>
</tagname>
EOT;

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML($xml);

header('Content-type: text/xml');
echo $dom->saveXML();

Are you trying to parse specific node?

Try simplexml_load_file

$xml = <<<EOT
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<tagname>
   <tag1 attr="foo">
      <tag2 attr1="one" attr2="two">SOME TEXT VALUE ADDED HERE</tag2>
   </tag1>
</tagname>
EOT;

$sx = simplexml_load_string($xml);
echo $sx->tag1->tag2;

// output
SOME TEXT VALUE ADDED HERE

If this isn't what you want, then try playing with DOMDocument, DOMXPath, DOMElement, SimpleXML instead of parsing it using the tutorial you posted

Edited May 23, 2013 by Eiseth

[labiere33]

I have a web page calling a PHP script that is trying to read an xml file from an external source and do something with the values, like display them in an HTML table or maybe insert them into a mySQL database. But I want to display both the tag attribute values and values between tags. So something like:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<item status="active">
   <desc language="en">WIDGET</desc>
</item>

could be parsed into an HTML table like this:

<table>
   <tr>
      <td>active</td>
      <td>en</td>
      <td>WIDGET<td>
   </tr>
</table>

So yes, I want to parse the entire xml file, creating a new table row in my output table for each "Item" tag I encounter.

[Eiseth]

Well you can use simplexml_load_string() or simplexml_load_file()

$xml = <<<EOT
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<item status="active">
   <desc language="en">WIDGET</desc>
</item>
EOT;

// Use file if your xml comes from a file
// this converts your xml to object, so $xml == your root element <item>
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);

$item_attributes = $xml->attributes();
echo $item_attributes['status']; // active

$desc_attributes = $xml->desc->attributes();
echo $desc_attributes['language']; // en

echo $xml->desc; // WIDGET

[Barand]

or

$xml = simplexml_load_file('my.xml');
$data = $xml->xpath('//item');

foreach ($data as $item) {
    echo $item['status'] .' | '. $item->desc['language'] .' | '. $item->desc .'<br>';
}

[labiere33]

Sorry I only seem to be able to mark one of those last two replies as "best". Just to help anyone else out looking for similar information I thought I would add,

 

The example I quoted above seems to be a little dated. I actually ran across it from Lynda.com in their "XML Basics" video tutorial.  Understandably, no one really explained how to modify that example. SimpleXML that became available in PHP 5 seems to be an easier way to achieve the goal. I have latched on to the Basic Tutorial at php net and I should be able to help myself further along now.

 

Thanks.

Edited May 24, 2013 by labiere33