Receiving an XML Push

[Kilo]

I know how to use the curl() functions to make an XML push and capture the returned data to a string. However, I've no idea how to set up a script to receive an XML from a third party.

Do I still use the curl() functions, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Any help or advice on receiving XML to a PHP script would be much appreciated. 🙂

[Kilo]

Doesn't anyone have any experience with receiving XML? I'm really stuck here! 😕

[Norman_Graham]

Hi Kilo

Are you trying to receive and parse an RSS feed? If so, check this board and devshed etc. for scripts - there are loads.

Here's the code I use for parsing blog feeds (limits results to three per blog):

<?php 

class RSSParser { 

var $insideitem = false; 
var $tag = ""; 
var $title = "";     
var $description = ""; 
var $link = ""; 
var $pubDate = ""; 
var $itemNumber = 0; 

function startElement($parser, $tagName, $attrs) {         
    if ($this->insideitem) { 
        $this->tag = $tagName; 
    } elseif ($tagName == "ITEM" && $this->itemNumber <= 2) { 
        $this->insideitem = true;             
    } 
} 

function endElement($parser, $tagName) {         
    if ($tagName == "ITEM" && $this->itemNumber <= 2) {             
        printf("<dt><a href='%s' target=\"_blank\">%s</a>\nPublication date:&nbsp;%s</dt>",                trim($this->link),htmlspecialchars(trim($this->title)),htmlspecialchars(trim($this->pubDate))); 
        printf("<dd>%s</dd>",htmlspecialchars(trim($this->description))); 
        $this->title = "";             
        $this->description = ""; 
        $this->link = ""; 
        $this->pubDate = ""; 
        $this->insideitem = false; 
        $this->itemNumber = $this->itemNumber + 1; 
    } 
} 

function characterData($parser, $data) { 
    if ($this->insideitem) { 
    switch ($this->tag) { 
        case "TITLE": 
        $this->title .= $data; 
        break;             
        case "DESCRIPTION": 
        $this->description .= $data; 
        break; 
        case "LINK": 
        $this->link .= $data; 
        break; 
        case "PUBDATE": 
        $this->pubDate .= $data; 
        break; 
    } 
    } 
} 
} 

?> 

You can then display it as HTML with this:

<?php

$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
$rss_parser = new RSSParser();
xml_set_object($xml_parser,&$rss_parser);
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "characterData");
$fp = fopen("http://www.feed.com/blog.cfm?format=rss","r")
	or die("Error reading RSS data.");
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096))
	xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))
		or die(sprintf("XML error: %s at line %d", 
			xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)), 
			xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
fclose($fp);
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);

?>

Is this what you wanted?

Norm

[Kilo]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure what "RSS" is, I'm afraid I'm quite new to this XML exchange business.

Basically, I need a script which can respond to an XML push from elsewhere. I perform XML pushes using the curl functions like this:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $strPostUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $strXml);
$strResponse = curl_exec($ch);

And I capture the response to $strResponse just fine. However, that's a situation where I initiate the XML exchange. I now need to be able to handle an incoming XML push, capture the XML and send a relevant XML response. I've just no idea where to begin! 🙁

[piersk]

RSS

[Kilo]

Okay, that's similar to what I'm up to. So effectively I'm the RSS server, and I need to capture XML that's sent to me, and then return some.

So how do I do it? I don't even know where to start. Someone pushes XML to my php script; how do I capture it?