[Resolved] Writing Data To A File

jeffgman

I am having a problem with the following script. The file which is created at the end, is blank. Shouldn't it have the data from the $xml variable?

<HTML>
<TITLE>RSS Feed - CNet News.com</TITLE>
<BODY>
<?
$filename = "cache/news.com.cache";
$age = 3600;                    // seconds
$url = 'http://news.com.com/2547-1_3-0-20.xml';

if ( file_exists ( $filename ) ) {
        $mtime = filemtime( $filename );
        $fileage = time() - mtime;
        if ( fileage < $age ) {
                $xml = simplexml_load_file($filename);
                $usedfile = "true";
                echo "From Local File";
        } else {
                $xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
                $usedfile = "false";
                echo "From Remote File";
        }
} else {
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
$usedfile = "false";
}

echo $xml->channel->title, '<br />';
echo '<br />';

foreach ($xml->channel->item as $item) {
        echo "<A HREF=\"$item->link\">$item->title</A>", '<br />';
        echo $item->description, '<br />';
        echo $item->pubDate, '<br />';
        echo '<br />';
}

if ($usedfile = "false") {
        $fp = @fopen( $filename, 'w' );
        fwrite( $fp, $xml );
        fclose( $fp );
        print $xml;
        print "File Saved";
}
?> 
</BODY>
</HTML>

nemonoman

What is simplexml_load_file()?
My guess is that $xml is an object, not text. You'll need to save the text held by the $xml object.

Installer

Just read the xml file and save the contents:

if ($usedfile = "false") { 
        $f_contents = file_get_contents($url);
        $fp = fopen($filename, 'wb'); 
        fwrite($fp, $f_contents ); 
        fclose($fp); 
        print $f_contents; 
        print "File Saved"; 
}

Installer

Even better, this will save reading the remote file twice:

$filename = 'cache/news.com.cache'; 
$url = 'http://news.com.com/2547-1_3-0-20.xml'; 
$age = 3600;
if (file_exists($filename) && ((time() - filemtime($filename)) < $age)) { 
    $usedfile = true; 
    echo 'From Local File' . '<br />'; 
} else {  

    $f_contents = file_get_contents($url);
    $fp = fopen($filename, 'wb'); 
    fwrite($fp, $f_contents); 
    fclose($fp); 
    $usedfile = false; 
    echo 'From Remote File' . '<br />'; 
} 

$xml = simplexml_load_file($filename); 
echo $xml->channel->title, '<br />'; 
echo '<br />'; 

foreach ($xml->channel->item as $item) { 
    echo "<A HREF=\"$item->link\">$item->title</A>", '<br />'; 
    echo $item->description, '<br />'; 
    echo $item->pubDate, '<br />'; 
    echo '<br />'; 
} 

if (!$usedfile) { 
    echo $f_contents . '<br />'; 
    echo 'File Saved' . '<br />'; 
}

jeffgman

I figured it out. Here is my new code for saving the file:

if ($usedfile = "false") {
        $xmldump = $xml->asXML();
        $fp = @fopen( $filename, 'w' );
        fwrite( $fp, $xmldump );
        fclose( $fp );
}

I am using the new asXML() command which goes with the simplexml_load_file() command. The simplexml_load_file() command is part of PHP 5.x.

Jeff