Parsing XML using PHP

Question

I\'ve consistently had an issue with parsing XML with PHP and not really found \"the right way\" or at least a standardised way of parsing XML files.

Firstly i\'m tr

Answer 1

This was how i have eventually done it using XMLReader:

";

$items = array ();
$i = 0;

$xmlReader = new XMLReader();
$xmlReader->open(XMLFILE, null, LIBXML_NOBLANKS);

$isParserActive = false;
$simpleNodeTypes = array ("title", "description", "media:title", "link", "author", "pubDate", "guid");

while ($xmlReader->read ())
{
    $nodeType = $xmlReader->nodeType;

    // Only deal with Beginning/Ending Tags
    if ($nodeType != XMLReader::ELEMENT && $nodeType != XMLReader::END_ELEMENT) { continue; }
    else if ($xmlReader->name == "item") {
        if (($nodeType == XMLReader::END_ELEMENT) && $isParserActive) { $i++; }
        $isParserActive = ($nodeType != XMLReader::END_ELEMENT);
    }

    if (!$isParserActive || $nodeType == XMLReader::END_ELEMENT) { continue; }

    $name = $xmlReader->name;

    if (in_array ($name, $simpleNodeTypes)) {
        // Skip to the text node
        $xmlReader->read ();
        $items[$i][$name] = $xmlReader->value;
    } else if ($name == "media:thumbnail") {
        $items[$i]['media:thumbnail'] = array (
                "url" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("url"),
                "width" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("width"),
                "height" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("height"),
                "type" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("type")
        );
    } else if ($name == "media:content") {
        $items[$i]['media:content'] = array (
                "url" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("url"),
                "width" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("width"),
                "height" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("height"),
                "filesize" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("fileSize"),
                "expression" => $xmlReader->getAttribute("expression")
        );
    }
}

print_r($items);
echo "

"; ?>