Parsing XML data using php to put into mysql database

Question

I have been asked to parse a simple file which is stored as an XML file, the data is to be then put into a mysql database.

However I have absolutely no clue what to

Answer 1

$xml = simplexml_load_file($filename);
foreach($xml->product as $product) {            

  foreach($product->attributes() as $name => $attribute) {
    echo "$name = $attribute";
  }         
}

Answer 2

You can use for example SimpleXMLElement and xpath

<?php
$xmlStr = <<<EOF
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<shop>
 <products>
    <product id="1" name="Cornetto" price="1.20" description="Traditional Cornetto" />
    <product id="2" name="Smarties" price="1.00" description="Smarties Icecream" />
 </products>
 <stocks>
    <stock id="1" amount="242" price="pounds" />
    <stock id="2" amount="11" price="pounds" />
 </stocks>
</shop>
EOF;

$xml=new SimpleXMLElement($xmlStr);

// get product line with xpath for example
$products=$xml->xpath("/shop/products/product");
if ($products) {
 // loop over each product node
 foreach ($products as $product) {
   // do whatever you want with the data
   echo("id=>".$product["id"].", name=>".$product["name"]."<br/>");
 }
}

// same for stock
// get product line with xpath for example
$stocks=$xml->xpath("/shop/stocks/stock");
if ($stocks) {
 // loop over each product node
 foreach ($stocks as $stock) {
   // do whatever you want with the data
   echo("id=>".$stock["id"].", amount=>".$stock["amount"]."<br/>");
 }
}

?>

Answer 3

$xml = simplexml_load_file($filename);

foreach($xml->products->product as $not)
{
    foreach($not->attributes() as $a => $b)
    {
        echo $a,'="',$b,"\"<br />";
    }
}

Answer 4

I personally like the normal XMl formatting so I changed it since its a bit more readable but this is how you can use it:

$xmlstr = <<<XML
<?xml version='1.0' standalone='yes'?>
<shop>
<products>
    <product>
        <id>1</id>
        <name>Cornetto</name>
        <price>1.20</price>
        <description>Traditional Cornetto</description>
    </product>
    <product>
        <id>2</id>
        <name>Smarties</name>
        <price>1.00</price>
        <description>Smarties Icecream</description>
    </product>
</products>
<stocks>
    <stock>
        <id>1</id>
        <amount>242</amount>
        <price>pounds</price>
    </stock>
    <stock>
        <id>2</id>
        <amount>11</amount>
        <price>pounds</price>
    </stock>
</stocks>
</shop>
XML;

Handling part:

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);
echo 'single value: <br />';
echo $xml->products->product[0]->id; // get single value

echo '<br /><br />';

//Loop trough multiple products
echo 'multiple values: <br />';
foreach($xml->products->product as $product)
{
    echo $product->id.' - ';
    echo $product->name.' - ';
    echo $product->price.' - ';
    echo $product->description;
    echo '<br/>';
}

Answer 5

Assuming the file is called data.xml

$string = file_get_contents('data.xml') reads the entire file into $string.

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($string); parses that string, and converts it into an object tree similar to the actual document. So if that's the document -

<root>
  <b>
    <c>first</c>
    <c>second</c>
  </b>
</root>

The SimpleXMLElement object would be used like:

$xml->b              // gets all children of b (c[0] and c[1])
print $xml->b->c[0]  // gets the first c, will print "first"