[RESOLVED] Using PHP & mySQL to dynamically update XML

[Maharg105]

Hi Guys,

I'm here again to see if I can't pick your brains for a little bit of advice.

On my site, I currently have a flash element that horizontally scrolls a set of images. It retrieves the images and the URL each image should link to from an external XML.

Now I would like to integrate something into my CMS which will allow my user to add and remove images from this slideshow as they see fit.

Would the best approach be for the CMS to write an entirely new XML file each time a record is added or deleted? Or would it be better to have a PHP script that generates the XML each time the appropriate page is loaded.

I am leaning towards the first option, as it seems to me that it would be less resource intensive. But I thought I would check to see if you lovely people knew something I didn't 🙂

As always, thanks so much for your help,

[Maharg105]

I decided to go with only writing the XML when records were added or deleted. It requires the file to written less often and would seem to me, that it would be less likely to cause conflicts.

In case anyone is ever looking for a similar solution, this is what I went with.

$xml_write = @mysql_query("select id, title, front_cover, publication FROM press ORDER BY id DESC");

$file= fopen("../scroll.xml", "w");

$_xml ="<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\r\n";
$_xml .="<items>\r\n";

while ($xmlrow = mysql_fetch_array($xml_write)) {

$_xml .="<item>\r\n";

$_xml .="\t\t<thumbURL>" . $xmlrow["front_cover"] . "</thumbURL>\r\n";
$_xml .="\t\t<linkURL>http://www.grahamdrew.com/shannonhazell/" . $xmlrow["id"] . "/press.php</linkURL>\r\n";
$_xml .="\t\t<caption>" . $xmlrow["title"] . " - "  . $xmlrow["publication"] . "</caption>\r\n";

$_xml .="<target></target>\r\n";

$_xml .="</item>\r\n"; }

$_xml .="</items>\r\n";

fwrite($file, $_xml);

fclose($file);

This method overwrites the file each time and makes sure that the most current information is being used.

Thanks,