Reading XML

[sgtpepper]

Hello,

I am trying to use PHP to read an XML file that lists songs and artist info that is current playing. I am at a loss on what the best way is. The file is called songs.xml and the output generated is this:

<audio_export>
&#8722;
<audio ID="id_1446474606_30071389">
<type>Song</type>
<status>Playing</status>
<title>All Day And All Of The Night</title>
<artist>Kinks</artist>
</audio>
&#8722;
<audio ID="id_1446630856_30071389">
<type>Song</type>
<status>None</status>
<title>Fox On The Run</title>
<artist>Sweet</artist>
</audio>
</audio_export>

What is simple code that would display this in a nice format?

Thank you for the help....

[TheoGB]

PHP has an XML Parser that I found worked well. http://php.net/manual/en/book.xml.php

Here's how I wrote one for Twitter (using the code examples on the PHP site):

function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs)
{
}


function endElement($parser, $name)
{
}


function twitter_retrieve()
{
	$curl = curl_init("http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/xxxxxxxx.rss");
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
	curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/atom+xml'));
	$response = curl_exec($curl);

if (!$response) {
	return array(0 => array('body' => 'Twitter site fault: no data to read.',
				'date' => date("jS F Y", mktime()),
				'link' => ''));
}
curl_close($curl);

$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "startElement", "endElement");

xml_parse_into_struct($xml_parser, $response, $vals, $index);

// Next line will show you what you're getting back which is very useful.
// the LEVEL aspect is important for navigating.
//	print_r($vals);

$output = array();
$j = 0;

for($i=0; $i<count($vals); $i++)
{
	if($vals[$i]['level'] == 4)
	{
		if($vals[$i]['tag'] == 'DESCRIPTION')
		{
			$output[$j]['body'] = isset($vals[$i]['value']) ? substr($vals[$i]['value'],16) : ''; // 16 is the length of this person's Twitter username to get rid of their username fronting each tweet.
		}
		if($vals[$i]['tag'] == 'PUBDATE')
			$output[$j]['date'] = substr($vals[$i]['value'], 0, -6);
		if($vals[$i]['tag'] == 'LINK')
		{
			$pos = strrpos($vals[$i]['value'], '/');
			$output[$j++]['uid'] = substr($vals[$i]['value'], ($pos+1));				
		}
	}
}

xml_parser_free($xml_parser);

return $output;
}

[NogDog]

I'd probably use the [man]SimpleXML[/man] extension, or possibly the [man]DOM[/man] extension.

[Kailan]

I've just written a total site using SimpleXML, once you get your head around it, its really easy to use! plus the xml manipulation is nice and tidy and it runs fast. just my two cents mind..

Kai

[Kailan]

ok.. after reading through that again you wanted a code example.. here's how simple it is in SimpleXML..

$xml = simplexml_load_file('input.xml');

foreach($xml->audio_export->audio as $audio) {
 $id = $audio['ID'];
 $type = $audio->type;
 $status = $audio->status;
 $title = $audio->title;
 $artist = $audio->artist;
}

Then inside that foreach loop you can just manipulate it to do whatever you want.. echo it, add it to a database or anything.
SimpleXML = simple 🙂 does exactly what it says on the tin 😛

Kai

[buaan]

I used this class!

http://www.criticaldevelopment.net/xml/doc.php

It worked fine.

[CODE]//get XML data
$xml = file_get_contents($choice);

//Set up the parser object
$parser = new XMLParser($xml);

//Work the magic...
$parser->Parse();

    //example of pulling data
    $count = (count($parser->document->question)-1);

[/CODE]

SimpleXML looks interesting though, might use that again.

HTH.

Ben.