[RESOLVED] Need guidance with XML parsing

utahnix

Hello there,

I'm trying to decide what the best way is to parse some XML templates I've developed. The idea is that these XML templates will be parsed and the data will be imported into a database (a CMS system I've developed)

Now, I could do preg matching and do a bunch of nested loops. But I'm not so sure that is the best thing to do.

I'm actually looking into PHP's XML functions, because I think they would be more extensible and flexible, but I'm a little lost. I really don't understand what I'm doing with them.

Suppose I have the following XML code:

<section>
  <article>
    <title>Headline</title>
    <slideshow>
      <photo src="file1.jpg">Caption</photo>
      <photo src="file2.jpg">Caption</photo>
      <photo src="file3.jpg">Caption</photo>
    </slideshow>

<body>
<p>para 1</p>
<p>para 2</p>
</body>

  </article>
  <article>
    <title>Headline</title>
    <slideshow>
      <photo src="file1.jpg">Caption</photo>
      <photo src="file2.jpg">Caption</photo>
      <photo src="file3.jpg">Caption</photo>
    </slideshow>

<body>
<p>para 1</p>
<p>para 2</p>
</body>

  </article>

</section>

Assuming I want to extract the headline, photo file name (src) and caption (assuming there could be no photos or many photos, as well as paragraph content, how would you go about it? Or would you stick with a preg approach?

What would all of you suggest?

NogDog

The first question is: are you using PHP 5? If so, then you want to start by looking at the [man]SimpleXML[/man] functions. If you're still stuck in PHP 4, then things get a it more complex.

utahnix

Yes, I am running PHP5.

I will look into these functions. Previous to these, the only thing I was seeing in the PHP documentation pages was document handler definition functions, which are way overkill for what I need.

Thanks!

laserlight

If you do not face any problems using SimpleXML for what you want to do, then remember to mark this thread as resolved using the thread tools.

Weedpacket

utahnix wrote:
which are way overkill for what I need.

You don't need to use all of them, you know....

utahnix

The PHP functions I was looking at initially wasn't the SimpleXML functions. Somehow I managed to miss finding those. I found myself reading XML data handler functions and was pretty confused, to say the least. But the SimpleXML functions will do the job.

Weedpacket

Those would be the stream-based parser functions. Unless you're working with multimegabyte or slow-moving files the other libraries are fully adequate.