PHP XML Parsing

Question

Which is the best way to parse an XML file in PHP ?

First
Using the DOM object

//code
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->load(         


        

Answer 1

It depends on the document you're passing, but XMLReader is usually the faster than both simplexml and DOM (http://blog.liip.ch/archive/2004/05/10/processing_large_xml_documents_with_php.html). Personally though I've never used XMLReader and usually decided which to use depending on whether or not I need to edit it:

• simplexml if I'm just reading a document
• DOM if I'm modifying the DOM and saving it back

You can also convert objects between simplexml and DOM.