Assigning xml generated by a while loop to a variable

Question

I am creating XML using a while loop, but now I need to prepend and append the generated XML with the XML header info and wrapper tag, but I am struggling to get it to work,

Answer 1

Here is how to do it with DOM:

function createUserDetailsXml(array $result) {

    $dom  = new DOMDocument;
    $dom->formatOutput = TRUE; // enable automatic indenting
    $dom->loadXML('<users/>'); // set root node

    foreach($result as $row) {

        // create user-details node
        $user = $dom->createElement('user-details');

        // create and append details to user-details node
        $user->appendChild(
            $dom->createElement('user-id', $row['uid']));
        $user->appendChild(
            $dom->createElement('user-name', $row['userName']));
        $user->appendChild(
            $dom->createElement('user-points', $row['points']));
        $user->appendChild(
            $dom->createElement('image-url', $row['imageURL']));
        $user->appendChild(
            $dom->createElement('thumb-url', $row['thumbURL']));

        // add user-details node to XML document, e.g. users node
        $dom->documentElement->appendChild($user);
    };
    return $dom->saveXML(); // returns the formatted XML
};

Note that the function expects you to pass in the full result array, so I could test it with:

$result = array(
    array(
        'uid'      => 1,
        'userName' => 'Gordon',
        'points'   => PHP_INT_MAX,
        'imageURL' => 'http://example.com/gordon.jpg',
        'thumbURL' => 'http://example.com/t_gordon.jpg'
    ),
    array(
        'uid'      => 2,
        'userName' => 'John <blink>"Frigging"</blink> Doe',
        'points'   => 0,
        'imageURL' => 'http://example.com/johndoe.jpg',
        'thumbURL' => 'http://example.com/t_johndoe.jpg'
    )
);
echo createUserDetailsXml($result);

The function will then return

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<users>
  <user-details>
    <user-id>1</user-id>
    <user-name>Gordon</user-name>
    <user-points>2147483647</user-points>
    <image-url>http://example.com/gordon.jpg</image-url>
    <thumb-url>http://example.com/t_gordon.jpg</thumb-url>
  </user-details>
  <user-details>
    <user-id>2</user-id>
    <user-name>John &lt;blink&gt;"Frigging"&lt;/blink&gt; Doe</user-name>
    <user-points>0</user-points>
    <image-url>http://example.com/johndoe.jpg</image-url>
    <thumb-url>http://example.com/t_johndoe.jpg</thumb-url>
  </user-details>
</users>

Please notice that DOM escaped the special chars in John Doe's name for you automatically. DOM will also make sure the XML element names (or attributes if you use them) are syntactically valid. It also added the XML Prolog.