PHP And XML Help

X-Lance

Hi, I need Help With Reading An XML File

http://www.ecb.int/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml

Into an Array Of Currency Name and Value.

Any Help Would Be Appreciated.
Regards
~Lance

bpat1434

Well, people would be more inclined to help if you told us what you have tried, or where you are in your code.

But basically....
Open a socket to the page,
read the contents to a variable.
Loop through the variable and grab the currency type
Grab the value as well

Something like....

<?php

$url = "http://www.ecb.int/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml";
$contents = file($url);

$currencies = new Array();

for($i=1; $i<=count($contents); $i++){
    if(in_array("currency=", $contents[$i])){
        $currency = mb_strcut($contents[$i], 17, 19);
        // Gets just the 3 letter currency
        $amount = mb_strcut($contents[$i], 28, 32);
        // Returns first 5 numbers of amount
        $row[$currency] = $amount;
        /* Alternate ways
        $currencies .= $currency."=>".$amount;
        $row[$i] = $currency."=>".$amount;
        */
    }
}
?>

That should do it. There are possibly better ways to retrieve stuff between the quotes, but not quite sure how to do it.

~Brett

X-Lance

that the thing... i dont have any code because i had no clue where to start. But ill try your code and tell you if it works.

Thanks
~Lance

X-Lance

dosnt work

http://www.xmgscripts.com/cart/xmltest.php

bpat1434

My bad. I used the wrong function check. Sorry.

 <?php 

$url = "http://www.ecb.int/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml"; 
$contents = file($url); 

$currencies = Array(); 

for($i=1; $i<=count($contents); $i++){ 
    if(stristr($contents[$i], "currency=") !== FALSE){
        echo "Current Tag Being Evaluated: <i>".$contents[$i]."</i><br>";
        $currency = mb_strcut($contents[$i], 17, 19);
        echo "Currency: <b>".$currency."</b><br>";
        // Gets just the 3 letter currency 
        $amount = mb_strcut($contents[$i], 28, 32);
        echo "Amount: <b>".$amount."</b><br>";
        // Returns first 5 numbers of amount 
        $currencies[$currency] = $amount;
        foreach($currencies as $curr => $amnt){
            echo "Currency: <b>".$curr."</b> Amount: <b>".$amnt."</b><br>";
        }
    } 
} 
?>

Updated the error causing search, and changed the array construct.

Oh, and please don't double post. Use the edit function. It's there for a reason (lower right hand corner of each post).

~Brett

X-Lance

good... i had to change md_strcut() to substr because it was an "undefined" function apparently. But when i got it working... well look.. it did 1 currency at a time... and did alot of loops for no reason.

http://www.xmgscripts.com/cart/xmltest.php

~Lance

bpat1434

Well, seems like everything works for me. Didn't notice anything.

~Brett

X-Lance

lol bpat... thats because ive been editing it since i got the code lol. im so close to getting it to work right too

x_davmonster_x

Although the above is a quick and easy method of scraping the data, I have to point out that PHP has a large amount of functions for parsing XML files.

I would use the XML DOM functions for parsing this document, as described on the following page: http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.domxml.php

The advantage of doing it this way is not only that you learn how to process XML files using the DOM functions (which will be valuable as XML continues to gain popularity) but if any changes are made to the structure of that source file, your code will pick them up and will not die a horrible death as the above position-dependant code is liable to.

X-Lance

with using XML, im still at a complete loss. can you help out at all?

x_davmonster_x

Unfortunatly I'm too busy right now to walk you through it. However, I can show you a class that I just wrote that uses the XML DOM to grab parts of an XML file, just like you need to.

http://www.davmonster.co.uk/log/read_one_inc.phps

I hope this helps, if not, I'm sure another poster will fill you in with the basics of processing XML files in PHP before long.