[RESOLVED] xml handling error

phpadarsh

ok i stored a the following xml text in a Mysql database:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><invoicelist></invoicelist>
then i retrieved it in a xml page, stored it in a string variable(say $str). but when i echo'd the variable, all that was printing on the page was
<invoicelist>
now the $str had the exact text in the database, which i verified by printing it character by character, but with separators in between.
but then why dint the </invoicelist> tag get printed?? ( i used the google chrome element inspector to verify that the closing tag was not getting displayed.)
then after being perplexed with the problem for about two days, i tried to flood some data into the xml, changing it to this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><invoicelist>data</invoicelist>
and wallah! every thing got displayed....
now my problem is, the need for my application is that i cant flood the data.is there no possible way that i feed an xml text , with out element data, just tags into an XMLPARSER???
i know this is not purely an php problem, more of a html problem, but the solution might lie in php...
kindly help.. i would be greatful.

johanafm

Are you certain the output was <invoicelist> and not actually <invoicelist/>?

And if you use a browser to display xml, rclick and show view source (commonly can use ctrl-u or cmd-u to view source) to see the actual non parsed xml code.

phpadarsh

hi johanafm. Thanks for replying.
so here's the thing.. i made the following xml page:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<rootnode></rootnode>
then when i opened it in IE, i found like u suggested : <rootnode/>
but when i opened it in google chrome, the result was the same old <rootnode>.
i also checked it using the google chrome inspect element, which is better than view source as it gives the dynamic data about the page, and not the info abt it when it was loaded. u can see a screenshot which shows all of the above at:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/adarshvritant/Phpbuilder#5384675994792016994
Hope u understood my problem.. thanks for readin n helping so far 🙂

johanafm

I don't know why google chrome would choose to display it as <rootnode>, unless it was followed by </rootnode>.

However, in xml it is perfectly valid to express an empty element as <element/>. And as such, I'd say there is no problem with the xml generation.

As for inspect element, I don't know how that works either. But claiming it would be better than show source to display dynamic data is wrong. View source shows the code received by the browser. Sure, you might enable caching by setting appropriate headers for this, but if all browsers use the cache while google's tool disregard cache for this particular purpose, you won't be looking at the correct set of data.

phpadarsh

i stand corrected... let me rephrase by saying that google chrome's inspect element is better than google chrome's view source..
may be i should try chrome's threads.. thank u for the advice 🙂

phpadarsh

i asked in chrome forums, and this is what i got:
The Inspector is rigged to make inspecting elements as minimal as possible; it usually doesn't show the ending tags for elements. This is so to stop the element navigation view from getting cluttered.

For example, why show:

in the elment viewer, when you can just navigate via

instead? It's all just about optimizing what you can see, while minimizing the visual clutter.

Try pressing Ctrl+U to view the source, and all of the elments should appear properly there.

sorry for the stupidity. thanks fr the patience.