There are several method to parse XML data using PHP, one of them is using SimpleXML.
SimpeXML requires PHP 5 or better but is one of the easiest way to parse XML in PHP, you can use object notation to refer to nodes.
The SimpleXML API documentation is here:
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php
Example 1
Here we show a very basic parsing, using xml text, passed using
simplexml_load_string. Then we output the object returned by
simplexml_load_string, shown below. (To load from a file, there is also a
simplexml_load_file function, an example of
simplexml_load_file is linked at the end of this tutorial.)
<?php
$xmlData=simplexml_load_string("<root><node>This is a node</node></root>");
echo var_dump($xmlData);
?>
The output is below, as you can see, an object containing the XML tree has been created.
Example 2
Here we show how to access the element within the object returned by
simplexml_load_string. It's just the basic object notations.
<?php
$xmlData=simplexml_load_string("<root><node>This is a node</node></root>");
echo $xmlData->node;
?>
The output is below:
Example 3
Accessing an attribute.
<?php
$xmlData=simplexml_load_string("<root><nodes><node1 exampleAttribute='sample attribute'>Node 1 Content</node1></nodes></root>");
echo "Node 1 content is ".$xmlData->nodes->node1;
echo "Node 1 attribute is ".$xmlData->nodes->node1->attributes()->exampleAttribute;
?>
The output is below:
Example 4
Iterating attributes.
<?php
$xmlData=simplexml_load_string("<root><node1 att1='ATT1' att2='ATT2'>Content</node1></root>");
foreach ($xmlData->node1->attributes() as $attributeName=>$attributeValue)
{
echo "Node 1 has ".$attributeName . " with the value of " . $attributeValue;
}
?>
The output is below:
Example 5
Creating XML: you add child nodes and attributes to the xml object, using
addChild and
addAttributes.
<?php
$xmlData=simplexml_load_string("<xml></xml>");
// Adding chld nodes
$book1=$xmlData->addChild("book1");
$book2=$xmlData->addChild("book2");
// Adding attributes
$book1->addAttribute("title", "Book1Title");
$book2->addAttribute("title", "Book2Title");
$book1->addChild("author", "Jim");
$book2->addChild("author", "James");
?>
The code above creates an XML that looks like this:
<xml>
<book1 title="Book1Title">
<author>Jim</auhor>
</book1>
<book2 title="Book2Title">
<author>James</author>
</book2>
</xml>
Let's access some of the nodes and print them out using the code below:
<?php
echo $xmlData->book1->attributes()->title. "\n";
echo $xmlData->book2->attributes()->title. "\n";
echo $xmlData->book1->author. "\n";
echo $xmlData->book2->author. "\n";
?>
Here's the output:
Example 6
Creating XML This is using the same technique as example 5, but using using the
SimpleXMLElement constructor.
The constructor takes either a string or URL. Reference:
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.construct.php.
<?php
$xmlData=new SimpleXMLElement("<xml></xml>");
// Adding child nodes
$book1=$xmlData->addChild("book1");
$book1->addAttribute("title", "Book1Title");
$book1->addChild("author", "Jim");
echo $book1->attributes()->title. "\n";
echo $book1->author. "\n";
?>
The output is as expected and shown below:
Head over to the next example showing how to use SimpleXML to parse RSS Feed:
http://permadi.com/blog/2010/03/integratingreading-rss-feed-using-php/
More guide about how to use the conditional conpilation variables is in the following page:
http://permadi.com/blog/2009/04/flex-builder-conditional-compilation/
