PHP 4 parsing xml or txt files

@supersteve3dOct 10.2006

Hi all,

Alas, I found out my host is only running php4. I read that php5 has new simplexml functions that make life easier.

I wish to read xml or txt files in and convert them (styled , tabulated) into html.

Is there an easy way to do this? I assume using xml is better than trying to read in text.

I do not want to simply cut and paste the whole file but rather look for certain tags to place and style them differently. As such I assume XML is a better choice?

Thanks.

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@neilemrichOct 10.2006 — #I have used xml input before in the form of rss and I dug up a couple of functions I wrote:

[CODE]function get_xmlvalue($val, $contents) {
 if (ereg($val, $contents)==true) {
 $chars = strlen($val);
 $valbegin = "<".$val.">";
 $valend = "</".$val.">";
 $beginpos = strpos($contents, $valbegin);
 $endpos = strpos($contents, $valend);
 $dif = ($endpos - $beginpos) - ($chars+2);
 
   return substr($contents, ($endpos-$dif), $dif);
   }
  }
 
  function get_xmlvalue_multi($val, $contents) {
   $split_data = explode("<".$val, $contents);
   $num = count($split_data);
   for($i=1; $i<$num; $i++) {
   $data[$i] = get_xmlvalue($val, "<".$val.$split_data[$i]);
   }
   return $data;
  }[/CODE]

The way it works is to do a file_get_contents of a url or file that you want to use then the get_xml_multi function will split it into the different records using $val as the marker i.e. in rss it's item - <item></item>

Then the get_xmlvalue function can be used to get the attributes for the item by the tag ($val).

For example:

your xml;

<item>

<name>This is the name</name>

<description>this is the description</description>

</item>

<item>

<name>This is the name2</name>

<description>this is the description2</description>

</item>

Then you could get this data like this;

[CODE]$items = get_xmlvalue_multi("item", file_get_contents(XML));
 for($i=0; $i<count($items); $i++) {
 echo 'Name of item '.$i.' = '.get_xmlvalue("name", $item[$i]).'<br />';
 echo 'Description of item '.$i.' = '.get_xmlvalue("description", $item[$i]).'<br /><br />';
 }[/CODE]

which would output;

[CODE]This is the name
 this is the description
 
 This is the name2
 this is the description2[/CODE]

Hope this makes sense

@NogDogOct 10.2006 — #[url=http://www.php.net/xml]XML Parser Functions[/url]

[url=http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.xml.xml-parser.php]Pear XML_Parser[/url]

@supersteve3dauthorOct 10.2006 — #

[CODE]$items = get_xmlvalue_multi("item", file_get_contents(XML));
 for($i=0; $i<count($items); $i++) {
 echo 'Name of item '.$i.' = '.get_xmlvalue("name", $item[$i]).'<br />';
 echo 'Description of item '.$i.' = '.get_xmlvalue("description", $item[$i]).'<br /><br />';
 }[/CODE]

I am not sure, but I believe the $item[$i] should be $items[$i] instead?

neilemrich, I am trying the code you supplied. It works for getting the whole chunk of xml out. However I am unable to parse the attributes within the element tags.

The XML structure I have is as follows

[CODE]
 <e1>
 <e2>
 <e3></e3>
 
 <e4 attr1="xx" attr2="yy" attr3="zz">Some Name</e4>
 <e4 attr1="aa" attr2="bb" attr3="cc">Some Name2</e4>
 <e4 attr1="ii" attr2="jj" attr3="kk">Some Name3</e4>
 
 </e2>
 </e1>
 [/CODE]

How can I extract the attr1 , attr2 values to be put into say.. a table?

Many thanks.

@neilemrichOct 10.2006 — #You could use a function like:

[CODE]function find($val, $contents) {
 $parts1 = explode($val.'="', $contents);
 $parts2 = explode('"', $parts1[1]);
 return $parts2[0];
 }[/CODE]

use it like this:

[CODE]echo find('att2', $contents);[/CODE]

@supersteve3dauthorOct 10.2006 — #neil,

Thank you. I got the attributes to work 80% ? See the output [URL=http://www.stevelim.com/web/firefox_extensions_xmltest.html]here[/URL]

A few problems though.

[list]

[*]The main element does not get listed properly, its gets mangled with the first attribute. (for the same reason, the first attribute cannot be listed).

[*]Not all entries seem to be listed, it stops before the end of the list.

[/list]

here is the current code I am using to get the output from the page above. You might notice some element entries are missing.

[CODE]$items = get_xmlvalue_multi("ext ", file_get_contents('/home/admin/extensions_list.xml'));
 for($i=0; $i<count($items); $i++) {
 
 //echo 'Name of item '.$i.' = '.get_xmlvalue("ext", $items[$i]).'<br />';
 //echo 'Description of item '.$i.' = '.get_xmlvalue("description", $items[$i]).'<br /><br />';
 
 echo '<b>'.find("creator", $items[$i]).'</b><br/>';
 echo find("description", $items[$i]).'<br/>';
 echo '<a href="'.find("homepageURL", $items[$i]).'">'.find("homepageURL", $items[$i]).'</a><br/><br/>';
 }[/CODE]

The xml I am using can be found here -> [URL=http://www.stevelim.com/extensions_list.xml]extensions_list.xml[/URL]

Thanks.

@neilemrichOct 11.2006 — #Have you changed something since posting this, I just had a look at the output page you linked to and it looks alright. The xml you linked to also does have items on there that aren't on the output page but I noticed the output page has items that aren't on the xml page, are you taking info from multiple pages?

I put the code into a page myself: [URL]http://www.k07.net/testt.php[/URL] and got all the entries coming up bar the last one (so I changed it to $i<count($items)+1; )

@supersteve3dauthorOct 11.2006 — #Have you changed something since posting this, I just had a look at the output page you linked to and it looks alright. The xml you linked to also does have items on there that aren't on the output page but I noticed the output page has items that aren't on the xml page, are you taking info from multiple pages?

I put the code into a page myself: [URL]http://www.k07.net/testt.php[/URL] and got all the entries coming up bar the last one (so I changed it to $i<count($items)+1; )[/QUOTE]

Neil,

Yes. apologies. I have been tinkering instead of remaining passively idle. =)

The output is from another computer, however it has the same format.

Regardless, when referring to the earlier example. Such as with the sample XML element below...

[CODE]<ext version="0.3" disabled="false" homepageURL="http://philringnalda.com/mozilla/blogthis/" description="Adds right-click access to Blogger's BlogThis popup." creator="Phil Ringnalda" updateURL="http://philringnalda.com/mozilla/blogthis/update.rdf" id="{8F82D6F9-D8F0-4477-8C73-908531D73538}">BlogThis</ext>[/CODE]

With your old code, what I was trying to say was I was unable to get the "BlogThis" entry between the main <ext ... </ext> tags. Also, something related was messing with the first attribute of the <ext> tag.. eg. version="0.3" I was not able to use your find function on the version attribute.

Thanks for continuing to pursue this thread. Have a kipper on me. =)

PS. I have since heard that perhaps it is a good idea to look into XSLT for styling XML into XHTML. However, learning how to brute force parse stuff is a good thing to know.

Steve.

@neilemrichOct 12.2006 — #I went over the functions because really they were meant for xml in the form of:

<item>

<name>Name</name>

<descripton>Description</description>

</item>

Not that it matters, just wasn't written for data in the form of yours, so instead just use this which seemed to work for me:

[CODE]function find($val, $contents) {
 $parts1 = explode($val.'="', $contents);
 $parts2 = explode('"', $parts1[1]);
 return $parts2[0];
 }
 
 function title($contents) {
 $temp = explode(">", $contents);
 return substr($temp[1], 0, -1);
 }
 
 
 function get_xmlvalue_multi($val, $contents) {
 $split_data = explode("<".$val, $contents);
 return $split_data;
 }
 
 $items = get_xmlvalue_multi("ext ", file_get_contents('http://www.stevelim.com/extensions_list.xml'));
 for($i=0; $i<count($items)+1; $i++) {
 
  echo '<b>'.title($items[$i]).'</b><br/>';
  echo '<b>'.find("creator", $items[$i]).'</b><br/>';
  echo find("description", $items[$i]).'<br/>';
  echo find("version", $items[$i]).'<br/>';
  echo '<a href="'.find("homepageURL", $items[$i]).'">'.find("homepageURL", $items[$i]).'</a><br/><br/>';
 }[/CODE]

The functions are a lot simpler like that too.

Hope this works for you

Neil

@supersteve3dauthorOct 12.2006 — #Neil,

Thank you! It works great. However its possible I stumbled upon a tiny bug of sorts? The 'find' function works great and in a predictable manner. However, the title function is doing some strange things.

Take for example the scenario of trying to remove the <br/> after the echo title, you will see that the subsequent echo does not trail it as you would expect. In fact, in my case, it seems to disappear(?) When I try removing the embedded <br/> or <b> tags from the echo find lines, it works as expected.

Bizarre. Also when I tried the code verbatim, I noticed that everything turned bold. I wonder if you experienced the same problem. ie. seems like the closing </b> was ignored by the call to the 'title' function.

Very likely related I suppose.

Cheers,

Steve.

@neilemrichOct 12.2006 — #Ahh yes, just seen that, fixed it by changing the title function slightly:

[CODE]function title($contents) {
 $temp = explode(">", $contents);
 return substr($temp[1], 0, -5);
 } [/CODE]

notice the -5 not -1

and I changed the line on the for loop to:

[CODE]
 for($i=1; $i<=count($items); $i++) {[/CODE]

The first record was just rubbish which was confusing things

Neil

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