PHP: read a php url as xml and parse it

Question

i got a url like this one http://somedomain.com/frieventexport.php and the content of this url is a plain XML structure if I check out the source-code of the site:

enter image description here

How can I parse this URL and use it in PHP? This script gives me an error… "Error loading XML".

<?php

    $xml_url = "http://somedomain.com/frieventexport.php";

    if (($response_xml_data = file_get_contents($xml_url))===false){
        echo "Error fetching XML\n";
    } else {
       libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
       $data = simplexml_load_string($response_xml_data);
       if (!$data) {
           echo "Error loading XML\n";
           foreach(libxml_get_errors() as $error) {
               echo "\t", $error->message;
           }
       } else {
          print_r($data);
       }
    }

?>

is there any data coming in $response_xml_data variable? sometimes URL are not allowed to be read in file_get_contents. please check your ini settings too. — sfdeveloper
– sfdeveloper, Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 10:04

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:57:02Z

1

One of the best options in my opinion is to use CURL to get the raw XML data from the url:

$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1 );
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://somedomain.com/frieventexport.php" );

$xml = curl_exec( $curl );
curl_close( $curl );

You can then use DOMDocument to parse the xml:

$document = new DOMDocument;
$document->loadXML( $xml );

I would also recommend using <![CDATA[]> tags in your XML. Please read the following:

More information about DOMDocument and usage

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:57

CommunityBot

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answered Feb 16, 2015 at 11:32

halfpastfour.am

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4 Comments

matt Over a year ago

Thank you, var_dump($document); is giving me this s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/3V3Y2P3L41401Q102J12/… … How can I work with that xml now. How do I loop through the elements and read specific tags?

halfpastfour.am Over a year ago

I'd recommend you look at the DOMDocument documentation. I'll link to it in my answer.

Kurt Leadley Over a year ago

The documentation that you provide via link is very extensive in content and in my opinion does not help him solve his confusion with the null var_dump

halfpastfour.am Over a year ago

@KurtLeadley that may be, but the question is "How can I parse this URL and use it in PHP?". I gave them more then what was asked for. Also, the documentation was added after he asked for more information about the link, see the first comment above.

Brian · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-16 10:10:14Z

1

file_get_contents() is usually disabled if this is shared hosting, if not you can set allow_url_fopen in php.ini (however beware of the security risks). You can check the setting of this using php_info() or var_dump(ini_get('allow_url_fopen')) to show if it's allowed or not.

If you cannot do the above, you can use CURL to fetch external content

answered Feb 16, 2015 at 10:10

Brian

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2 Comments

matt Over a year ago

How would I do this using CURL? Can you give me an example please, thank you.

Brian Over a year ago

Plenty example out there, here is one to get you started ... stackoverflow.com/questions/561816/…

halfpastfour.am · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-16 11:29:16Z

0

Try the following:

$url = 'xml-file.xml';
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
print_r($xml);

edited Feb 16, 2015 at 11:29

halfpastfour.am

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answered Feb 16, 2015 at 10:09

Arun

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Comments

Mohammad · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-16 10:07:04Z

-1

Try this :

$livescore_data = new SimpleXMLElement($file);

answered Feb 16, 2015 at 10:07

Mohammad

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