XML Parsing

skip

Hello,

I hate XML it drives me nuts 🙁

I have some results from the shopping.com API which is lovley but I can't do anything with them. Is there an easy way I can access the data?

example of the xml expected
http://demo.uk.api.shopping.com/scripts/GSIsapiExt.dll/linkin_id-8001233/Keyword-Sony%20Mavica%20MVC-FD200%20Digital%20Camera

NogDog

If running PHP 5, you could take a look at the [man]simpleXML[/man] functions.

skip

Hello M8 I did take a look see on the php.net site but sadly no jopy I just can't get my head around it at all. Well I can't get it to work with the data I have

NogDog

Without any specific explanation as to what you want to do, it's hard to give specific answers. Here's a short sample of grabbing the total-price:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://demo.uk.api.shopping.com/scripts/GSIsapiExt.dll/linkin_id-8001233/Keyword-Sony%20Mavica%20MVC-FD200%20Digital%20Camera') 
      or die("Unable to get XML feed");
printf("<p>Total Price: $%.2f</p>\n", 
$xml->result->domain->{'domain-listing'}->{'store-offers'}->{'store-offer'}->{'total-price'});
?>

Bobulous

Hello, Skip.

I've written a few functions for extracting data from XML using regular expressions,

http://www.bobulous.org.uk/coding/php-xml-regex.html

They make it pretty easy to grab pieces of data from well-structured XML, but make sure you read the limitations section because using these functions won't work in all circumstances.

It works for me with the XML generated by Amazon ECS, so hopefully it'll work for you and the shopping.com XML.