Reading XML

NZ_Kiwis

HI have this XML source..

http://www.westpac.co.nz/olcontent/olcontent.nsf/fx.xml

How can I loop through all the nodes and display them???
I've not used XML a lot.

Weedpacket

Well, there are the [man]SimpleXML[/man] and [man]DOM[/man] extensions available; both sections provide examples of their use including using them to iterate over nodes.

NZ_Kiwis

I have this code

But how can I get the node name or code like "Singapore Dollar" and "SGD"???

<?php
$file = "http://www.westpac.co.nz/olcontent/olcontent.nsf/fx.xml";
?>

<?php 
function contents($parser, $data){ 
    echo $data; 
} 

function startTag($parser, $data){ 
    echo "<b>"; 
} 

function endTag($parser, $data){ 
    echo "</b><br />"; 
} 

$xml_parser = xml_parser_create(); 

xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startTag", "endTag"); 

xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "contents"); 

$fp = fopen($file, "r"); 

$data = fread($fp, 80000); 



if(!(xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp)))){ 
    die("Error on line " . xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)); 
} 

xml_parser_free($xml_parser); 

fclose($fp); 

?>

Bobulous

Using SimpleXML, once you've got a SimpleXMLElement object which represents your XML document (let's say you've called the object variable $content), you can just access elements and attributes like so:

$first_country = $content->country[0];
$first_currency = $first_country['name'];
$first_currency_code = $first_country['code'];

If you want to run through the whole XML document, you can use foreach on $content->country.

I wrote an article on my site about using SimpleXML (to extract data from an XML feed):

http://www.bobulous.org.uk/coding/php-5-xml-feeds.html

But it's mostly about creating the SimpleXMLElement object and then using it to produce markup. The best way to learn how to access the object is the "Basic usage" guide in the SimpleXML section of the PHP docs.

NZ_Kiwis

Wow i'm so lost.

NogDog

Not to confuse the issue too much, but if you just want to display all the content in the XML, then you could simply use XSLT to do so. Of course, it's another protocol to learn. 🙂

laserlight

NZ_Kiwis wrote:
But how can I get the node name or code like "Singapore Dollar" and "SGD"???

An example that assumes a well formed XML document:

<?php

$document = 'http://www.westpac.co.nz/olcontent/olcontent.nsf/fx.xml';
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($document, NULL, true);
foreach ($xml->children() as $child) {
    if ($child->getName() == 'country' && isset($child['name'], $child['code'])) {
        echo htmlspecialchars($child['code']) . ': ' . htmlspecialchars($child['name']) . "<br />\n"; 
    }
}

NZ_Kiwis

thanks laserlight.

How do I get child nodes and values inside that now

NogDog

PS: Here's an example using SimpleXML:

<?php
$text = file_get_contents('http://www.westpac.co.nz/olcontent/olcontent.nsf/fx.xml');
if(!empty($text))
{
   $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($text);
   foreach($xml->country as $country)
   {
      printf("<h3>&#37;s (%s)</h3>\n<ul>\n", $country['name'], $country['code']);
      foreach($country->rate as $rate)
      {
         printf("<li>%s: %f</li>\n", $rate['type'], $rate);
      }
      echo "</ul>\n";
   }
}

laserlight

NZ_Kiwis wrote:
How do I get child nodes and values inside that now

Looking at my example, you should already have some idea of how to get the children of the root node and their attributes. Surely this is enough for you to better understand the PHP manual's SimpleXML documentation? 🙂