XML as a variable?

[bladx]

Hey everyone,
i've been having some trouble getting XML and XSL to be transformed when I am using "dynamic" XML from a MySQL database. I get a query from the database, put it into a variable $xml and then try to use that with an XSL file to transform the $xml data into a result that is outputted to a browser. But when I run this, nothing happens--I just get a blank screen. here's the code... and I have been trying to find out how to do this by reading the examples on this page

<?php

//
// DB Connect stuff here
// ...
//

$query = "select * from story where sid < 2";
$result = mysql_query($query, $dbi);
$numfields = mysql_num_fields($result);
$numrows = mysql_num_rows($result);

echo "total results: $numrows <br /><br /><br />";
$xml = "&lt;?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?&gt;<br /><br />";

while($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {
	$xml .= "&lt;entry&gt;<br />";
	for ($j=0; $j < $numfields; $j++) {
		$tag = mysql_field_name($result, $j);

	$xml .= "&lt;$tag&gt;" . strip_tags($row->$tag) . "&lt;/$tag&gt;<br />";
}
$xml .= "&lt;/entry&gt;";
$xml .= "<br /><br />";
}

$arguments = array(
     '/_xml' => $xml
);

//create instance of xslt parser
$xh = xslt_create();

// Process the document
$result = xslt_process($xh, 'arg:/_xml', 'sqlxsl.xsl', NULL, $arguments);
if ($result) {
   echo "SUCCESS, sample.xml was transformed by sample.xsl into the \$result";
   echo " variable, the \$result variable has the following contents\n<br />\n";
   echo "<pre>\n";
   echo $result;
   echo "</pre>\n";
} else {
   echo "Sorry, sample.xml could not be transformed by sample.xsl into";
   echo "  the \$result variable the reason is that " . xslt_error($xh) .
   echo " and the error code is " . xslt_errno($xh);
}
xslt_free($xh);

?>

[drew010]

parse error in this code:

echo "  the \$result variable the reason is that " . xslt_error($xh) .
echo " and the error code is " . xslt_errno($xh);

//change it to

echo "  the \$result variable the reason is that " . xslt_error($xh);
echo " and the error code is " . xslt_errno($xh);

[bladx]

thanks for the reply,
it looks like my XML is not well-formed, although I don't see where it is talking about. There is an opening and closing tag for each seperate line of data, and there aren't extra < or > in the XML (within the tags.) It is really strange. Are there any good validator programs that I could use to determine what exactly is causing the problem? I've tried having my XML validated at W3 online, but I can't do it from work because i'm behind a certain proxy, and the W3 validator says something about privacy... so it won't let me validate it.

Thanks for any help

[drew010]

i think it isnt well formed because it looks like you dont have a root element tag.

[bladx]

Even when I tried putting some sort of root tag, I still am getting the same error. But before when I tried it without any type of root tag, it gave the same error. But when I try running it as an XML file by itself, it works perfectly. I don't know what the problem is, or how I can get the variable to work correctly when transforming. Here's the output of what I get:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<root><entry>
<sid>1</sid>
<catid>1</catid>
<subcat>11</subcat>
<child>0</child>
<title>About Our Schools</title>
<author>author_name</author>
<date>2002-07-08 12:19:01</date>
<bodytext>This is the main body of the article or story.</bodytext>
<layout></layout>
<image></image>
<shortdescription>Visit each of our schools online for news related to their individual activities.</shortdescription>
<relevance>1</relevance>
<topstory>1</topstory>
<last_accessed>2004-05-21 09:36:19</last_accessed>
</entry>

</root>

[drew010]

it may be complaining because there is no dtd so it cant fully validate if all the tags are allowed, but other than that, it is a perfectly legal xml doc.

[bladx]

But it works fine if that XML is in a file. The problem is, I can't seem to use a variable (argument) to do this, even though it looks as though this should work--according to the third example on this documentation --> http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.xslt-process.php

it really is a strange problem

[bladx]

Oh... what happened was, I was just messing up the actual $xml input with messed up quotes or something.. since I know that when I am looking for an answer about how someone fixed something, I'll post the code that seemed to work for me (finally). Thanks for the help 😃

<?php

#
# DB Connect stuff here
#

$query = "select * from story where sid < 5";
$result = mysql_query($query, $dbi);
$numfields = mysql_num_fields($result);
$numrows = mysql_num_rows($result);

echo "total results: $numrows <br /><br /><br />";

$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><root>';

while($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {

$xml .= '<entry>';
for ($j=0; $j < $numfields; $j++) {
	$tag = mysql_field_name($result, $j);

	// get tag name and put query info in each tag
	$xml .= "<$tag>" . strip_tags($row->$tag) . "</$tag>";
}

$xml .= '</entry>';

}

$xml .= '</root>';

echo htmlentities($xml);

$arguments = array('/_xml' => $xml);

//create instance of xslt parser
$xh = xslt_create();

// Process the document
$result = xslt_process($xh, 'arg:/_xml', 'sqlxsl.xsl', NULL, $arguments);
if ($result) {
   echo "SUCCESS, sample.xml was transformed by sample.xsl into the \$result";
   echo " variable, the \$result variable has the following contents\n<br />\n";
   echo "<pre>\n";
   echo $result;
   echo "</pre>\n";
} else {
   echo "Sorry, sample.xml could not be transformed by sample.xsl into";
   echo "  the \$result variable the reason is that " . xslt_error($xh);
   echo " and the error code is " . xslt_errno($xh);
}
xslt_free($xh);

?>