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Harness XML with PHP 5 extensions
A time to query
Hands on PHP is one of the most commonly used languages for developing web sites while XML has become an industry standard for exchanging data. Increasingly, web sites use XML to transfer data through web feeds such as RSS and Atom, or through web services.
PHP 5 XML extensions provide support for parsing, transformation, XPath navigation, and schema validation of XML documents. The SimpleXML extension in PHP 5 simplifies node selection by converting an XML document to a PHP object that may be accessed with property selectors and array iterators. The XSL extension in PHP 5 is used to transform an XML document.
In this article, I'll show you how to process an example XML document, catalog.xml
using the PHP 5 XML extensions.
First things first, though. Before you go anywhere, you'll need to install PHP 5 in Apache HTTP Server, and activate the XSL extension in the php.ini
configuration file.
extension=php_xsl.dll
Restart Apache Server after modifying php.ini
.
Create your XML
To create an XML document with the PHP 5 DOM extension create a PHP file, createXML.php
, in the C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs
directory, the document root directory of the Apache server. An XML document in PHP 5 is represented with DOMDocument
class. Therefore, create a DOMDocument
object. Specify the XML version and encoding in the DOMDocument
constructor.
$domDocument = new DOMDocument('1.0','utf-8');
An element is represented with the DOMElement
class. Create root element catalog
with createElement()
. Add the root element to the DOMDocument
object with appendChild()
.
$catalog= $domDocument->createElement("catalog"); $domDocument->appendChild ($catalog);
An attribute in a DOMElement
object is represented with the DOMAttr
class. Create attribute title
with createAttribute()
. Set the value of the title
attribute using the value
property. Add the title
attribute to catalog
element using setAttributeNode()
.
$titleAttribute= $domDocument->createAttribute("title"); $titleAttribute->value="XML Zone"; $catalog->setAttributeNode ($titleAttribute);
Create a journal
element, including the date
attribute, within the catalog
element. Add an article
element, including sub elements title
and author
, within the journal
element. A text node in an element is represented with the DOMText
class. Create a text node using the createTextNode()
to set the text of title
element.
$titleText= $domDocument->createTextNode("The Java XPath API"); $title->appendChild ($titleText);
Output the XML document created to the browser using saveXML()
.
$domDocument->saveXML();
Run the PHP script with URL http://localhost/createXML.php
. The XML document, catalog.xml
, gets generated.