Good resource/tutorial for writing and editing XML data

Kris5_0

Anyone know of a good tutorial or resource for writing XML using PHP? I have a page where the user submits data and then an XML file must be created based off of this data.

I'd also like to be able to edit entires already in the XML file... would this require me to get the entire contents of the file and re-write the whole thing or is there a better way?

I'd do this with a database if I could, but my host has none and I can't use any due to restrictions that they have.

Shrike

You can use the PHP [MAN]DOMXML[/MAN] extension, but it's probably a bit heavy going unless you have some experience of XML and OO. It does offer the most flexibility for manipulating XML documents though.

In answer to your question, you would always have to read the entire file into memory and manipulate it that way, regardless of the tools used to do it.

Kris5_0

I found that for adding new entires, I can possibly get by without reading in the entire thing. All I need to do is delete the last line that has the closing tag for the XML data, then add my new item, then re-add the closing tag. Any good way to go about deleting the last line out of a file?

Shrike

Ick thats just nasty, it assumes that the XML file has a particular physical structure. If your convinced about using that approach, then you could just do

$f = file("file.xml");
$end = array_pop($f);
$f[count($f)] = "<new_element>foobar</new_element>";
$f[count($f)] = $end;
$fh = fopen("file.xml", "w+");
// Write file back etc

I Don't recommend it though :p

Kris5_0

Originally posted by Shrike
Ick thats just nasty, it assumes that the XML file has a particular physical structure. If your convinced about using that approach, then you could just do
$f = file("file.xml");
$end = array_pop($f);
$f[count($f)] = "<new_element>foobar</new_element>";
$f[count($f)] = $end;
$fh = fopen("file.xml", "w+");
// Write file back etc
I Don't recommend it though :p [/B]

Well, since my script is the only thing that will create the XML file, it will have a particular structure... maybe not the cleanest way to do it, but right now I just want it to work. I'll worry about making it right later 😃 Thanks.