SimpleXML in PHP 5

In an earlier tutorial you might have read, XML Parsing using PHP { Intermediate }, the full XML Parser class was used, which requires tons of lines of code and extra time. In PHP5, we can use the Simple XML class to quickly parse XML in as few as two lines of code.

Our Extensible Markup Language Text
I'm using the same text as Jubba's XML Parsing tutorials, except I might add some attributes to show you the extra power of Simple XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <news> <story> <headline> Godzilla Attacks LA! </headline> <description>Equipped with a Japanese Mind-control device, the giant monster has attacked important harbours along the California coast. President to take action. </description> </story> <story> <headline> Bigfoot Spotted at M.I.T. Dining Area </headline> <description>The beast was seen ordering a Snapple in the dining area on Tuesday. In a related story, Kirupa Chinnathambi, an MIT engineering student has been reported missing. </description> </story> <story> <headline> London Angel Saves England </headline> <description>The "London Angel" known only as "Kit" has saved the U.K. yet again. Reports have stated that she destroyed every single Churchill bobble-head dog in the country. A great heartfilled thank you goes out to her. </description> </story> <story> <headline> Six-eyed Man to be Wed to an Eight-armed Woman </headline> <description>Uhhhmmm... No comment really... just a little creepy to see them together... </description> </story> <story> <headline> Ahmed's Birthday Extravaganza! </headline> <description>The gifted youngster's birthday party should be a blast. He is turning thirteen and has requested a large cake, ice cream, and a petting zoo complete with pony rides. </description> </story> </news>

Our PHP Code
I know you're expecting a couple hundred or so lines of advanced PHP with impossible to understand comments. You're wrong, here's the two lines you need to get a Simple XML object:

//Since we're already using PHP5, why don't we exploit their easy to use file_get_contents() command? $xmlFileData = file_get_contents(“input.xml”); //Here's our Simple XML parser! $xmlData = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlFileData); //And here's the output. print_r($xmlData);

Execute that on your PHP server, and you get some meaningless gibberish like the following.

SimpleXMLElement Object ( [story] => Array ( [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [headline] => Godzilla Attacks LA! [description] => Equipped with a Japanese Mind-control device, the giant monster has attacked important harbours along the California coast. President to take action. ) [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [headline] => Bigfoot Spotted at M.I.T. Dining Area [description] => The beast was seen ordering a Snapple in the dining area on Tuesday. In a related story, Kirupa Chinnathambi, an MIT engineering student has been reported missing. ) [2] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [headline] => London Angel Saves England [description] => The "London Angel" known only as "Kit" has saved the U.K. yet again. Reports have stated that she destroyed every single Churchill bobble-head dog in the country. A great heartfilled thank you goes out to her. ) [3] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [headline] => Six-eyed Man to be Wed to an Eight-armed Woman [description] => Uhhhmmm... No comment really... just a little creepy to see them together... ) [4] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [headline] => Ahmed's Birthday Extravaganza! [description] => The gifted youngster's birthday party should be a blast. He is turning thirteen and has requested a large cake, ice cream, and a petting zoo complete with pony rides. ) ) ) )

To actually get data from that jumble of values, we can access it as an array with a class applied to it. Like so:

//Retrieving the headline from the first story $xmlHeadline = $xmlData->story[0]->headline; //Printing our first headline print($xmlHeadline);

But what if you wanted the date of the story, but didn't want to have to add another node to the story array? Just add an attribute. And Simple XML can also handle attributes! So our new XML looks like:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <news> <story> <headline date=”January 19, 2005”> Godzilla Attacks LA! </headline> <description>Equipped with a Japanese Mind-control device, the giant monster has attacked important harbours along the California coast. President to take action. </description> </story> <story> <headline date=”February 14, 2006”> Bigfoot Spotted at M.I.T. Dining Area </headline> <description>The beast was seen ordering a Snapple in the dining area on Tuesday. In a related story, Kirupa Chinnathambi, an MIT engineering student has been reported missing. </description> </story> <story> <headline date=”May 27, 2006”> London Angel Saves England </headline> <description>The "London Angel" known only as "Kit" has saved the U.K. yet again. Reports have stated that she destroyed every single Churchill bobble-head dog in the country. A great heartfilled thank you goes out to her. </description> </story> <story> <headline date=”June 3, 2006”> Six-eyed Man to be Wed to an Eight-armed Woman </headline> <description>Uhhhmmm... No comment really... just a little creepy to see them together... </description> </story> <story> <headline date=”July 28, 2006”> Ahmed's Birthday Extravaganza! </headline> <description>The gifted youngster's birthday party should be a blast. He is turning thirteen and has requested a large cake, ice cream, and a petting zoo complete with pony rides. </description> </story> </news>

So now we have all our news and their dates, but how do we show it to people? We can use a simple foreach loop to output everything to people.

//Outputing all of our XML to people foreach($xmlData->story as $story) { print(“<h2>” . $story->headline . “</h2><br />”); print($story->description . “<br />_________________________<br />”); print($story->headline["date"] . “<br /><br />”); }

Of course the output doesn't look very pretty, but you could write some nice CSS or something to fix that! Remember, this only works in PHP5, so get PHP5, because it's so much better than any other version of PHP!

Something along the lines of 'Cheers!'

Esherido