Introduction

Hi guys. In this article we are going to understand the concept of PHP Expat parser & XML DOM. First of all we need to know about XML. XML is used to describe data and to focus on what data is. An XML file describes the structure of the data. There are only user defined tags in XML.

XML Expat Parser with PHP

Here in this section we will understand the use of Xml Expat parser. To read and update - create and manipulate - an XML document, for this purpose you required an XML parser.

Two basic types of XML parsers

Tree-based parser

This parser transforms an XML document into a tree structure. It analyzes the whole document, and provides access to the tree elements. e.g. the Document Object Model (DOM).

Event-based parser

Views an XML document as a series of events. When a specific event occurs, it calls a function to handle it

Expat parser is an event-based parser

Lets have a concept with example

 <from>Deepak</from>

 Description of above tag

An event-based parser reports the XML above as a series of 3 events

Note : The XML Expat parser functions are part of the PHP core. There is no installation needed to use these functions.

XML File

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<note>
<to>Prerna kaul</to>
<from>Deepak dwij</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Happy new year 2012!</body>
</note>

Save it by xm.xml

PHP script for using the concept

 <html>
<body bgcolor="lightgreen">
<center>
<h4> XML Expat Parser ! <h4>
<hr>
<?php
//Initialize the XML parser
 $parser=xml_parser_create();
//Function to use at the start of an element
function start($parser,$element_name,$element_attrs)
{
switch($element_name)
 {
case "NOTE":
echo "-- Note --<br />";
break;
case "TO":
echo "To: ";
break;
case "FROM":
echo "From: ";
break;
case "HEADING":
echo "Heading: ";
break;
case "BODY":
echo "Message: ";
}
}
//Function to use at the end of an element
function stop($parser,$element_name)
{
echo "<br />";
}
//Function to use when finding character data
function char($parser,$data)
{
echo $data;
}
//Specify element handler
 xml_set_element_handler($parser,"start","stop");
//Specify data handler
 xml_set_character_data_handler($parser,"char");
//Open XML file
$fp=fopen("xm.xml","r");
//Read data
while ($data=fread($fp,4096))
{
xml_parse($parser,$data,feof($fp)) or
die (sprintf("XML Error: %s at line %d",
xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($parser)),
xml_get_current_line_number($parser)));
}
//Free the XML parser
xml_parser_free($parser);
?>
</center>
</body>
</html>

Save it by xmlp.php

Output

To run the code, Open the XAMPP server and start the services like Apache and MySQL. Open the browser type: http://localhost/yourfoldername/xmlp.php

xml.gif

XML DOM with PHP

In this section we are going a have XML DOM concept. The concept is based on the built-in DOM parser that makes it possible to process XML documents in PHP.

Lets have a meaning of DOM in brief.

DOM provides a standard set of objects for HTML and XML documents, and a standard interface for accessing and manipulating them. DOM is separated into different parts (Core, XML, and HTML) and different DOM Levels.

PHP script for the DOM concept

<html>
<body bgcolor="lightgreen">
<center>
<h4> PHP XML DOM ! <h4>
<hr>
<?php
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load("xm.xml");
print $xmlDoc->saveXML();
?>
</center>
</body>
</html>

Save it as dom.php.

Output

 To run the code, Open the XAMPP server and start the services like Apache and MySQL. Open the browser type: http://localhost/yourfoldername/dom.php

xml2.gif

Thanks !