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PHP SimpleXML
Posted by jujur
on
5:43 AM
PHP SimpleXML
SimpleXML handles the most common
XML tasks and leaves the rest for other extensions.
What is SimpleXML?
SimpleXML is new in PHP 5. It is
an easy way of getting an element's attributes and text, if you know the XML
document's layout.Compared to DOM or the Expat parser, SimpleXML just takes a few lines of code to read text data from an element.
SimpleXML converts the XML document into an object, like this:
- Elements - Are converted to
single attributes of the SimpleXMLElement object. When there's more than
one element on one level, they're placed inside an array
- Attributes - Are accessed using
associative arrays, where an index corresponds to the attribute name
- Element Data - Text data from
elements are converted to strings. If an element has more than one text
node, they will be arranged in the order they are found
- Reading XML files
- Extracting data from XML strings
- Editing text nodes or attributes
Installation
As of PHP 5.0, the SimpleXML
functions are part of the PHP core. There is no installation needed to use
these functions.
Using SimpleXML
Below is an XML file:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<note>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>
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Here's what to do:
1. Load the
XML file
2. Get the
name of the first element
3. Create a
loop that will trigger on each child node, using the children() function
4. Output
the element name and data for each child node
Example<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
echo $xml->getName() . "<br />";
foreach($xml->children() as $child)
{
echo $child->getName() . ": " . $child . "<br />";
}
?>
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note
to: Tove
from: Jani
heading: Reminder
body: Don't forget me this weekend!
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More PHP SimpleXML
For more information about the PHP
SimpleXML functions, visit our PHP SimpleXML
Reference.
