Tue, 21 Apr 2009
/Coding/php:
XML to Object Conversion
In working with the KnowledgeTree API[2] I found that the response to my
http posts to the API came back in the form of XML. I needed to get that XML
into PHP-processable form, and a quite a bit of googling mostly turned up
home-grown solutions, a lot of them referring to themselves as "xmltoarray"
functions . Until I found the PHP-native solution, SimpleXMLElement[1].
Hopefully this post will help to push SimpleXMLElement a little higher in
Google's search listings....
Suppose I have a big junk of XML in string form, such as this response
to a KnowledgeTree API directory listing:
<![CDATA[
<response>
<status_code>0</status_code>
<message/>
−
<results>
<folder_id>1</folder_id>
<folder_name>Root Folder</folder_name>
<full_path>/</full_path>
−
<items>
−
<item>
<id>2</id>
<item_type>F</item_type>
<custom_document_no>n/a</custom_document_no>
<oem_document_no>n/a</oem_document_no>
<title>DroppedDocuments</title>
<document_type>n/a</document_type>
<filename>DroppedDocuments</filename>
<filesize>n/a</filesize>
<created_by>Administrator</created_by>
<created_date>n/a</created_date>
<checked_out_by>n/a</checked_out_by>
<checked_out_date>n/a</checked_out_date>
<modified_by>n/a</modified_by>
<modified_date>n/a</modified_date>
<owned_by>n/a</owned_by>
<version>n/a</version>
<is_immutable>n/a</is_immutable>
<permissions>RWA</permissions>
<workflow>n/a</workflow>
<workflow_state>n/a</workflow_state>
<mime_type>folder</mime_type>
<mime_icon_path>folder</mime_icon_path>
<mime_display>Folder</mime_display>
<storage_path>n/a</storage_path>
<items/>
</item>
−
<item>
<id>11</id>
<item_type>F</item_type>
<custom_document_no>n/a</custom_document_no>
<oem_document_no>n/a</oem_document_no>
<title>Public</title>
<document_type>n/a</document_type>
<filename>Public</filename>
<filesize>n/a</filesize>
<created_by>Administrator</created_by>
<created_date>n/a</created_date>
<checked_out_by>n/a</checked_out_by>
<checked_out_date>n/a</checked_out_date>
<modified_by>n/a</modified_by>
<modified_date>n/a</modified_date>
<owned_by>n/a</owned_by>
<version>n/a</version>
<is_immutable>n/a</is_immutable>
<permissions>RWA</permissions>
<workflow>n/a</workflow>
<workflow_state>n/a</workflow_state>
<mime_type>folder</mime_type>
<mime_icon_path>folder</mime_icon_path>
<mime_display>Folder</mime_display>
<storage_path>n/a</storage_path>
<items/>
</item>
−
</items>
</results>
</response>
]]>
in a variable called $response. Converting to a structured object is
simply:
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
And then the object might be processed as follows:
<![CDATA[
if( $xml->status_code != 0 ){
echo 'Error - operation failed: ' . $xml->message;
} else {
// print_r($xml); // to see data structure
echo "<p>folder ID = " . $xml->results->folder_id . "<br>";
echo "folder name = " . $xml->results->folder_name . "<br>";
echo "folder path = " . $xml->results->full_path . "<p>";
foreach ($xml->results->items->item as $value) {
echo "item type = " . $value->item_type . " ";
echo "item ID = " . $value->id . " ";
echo "item name = " . $value->filename . "<br>";
}
}
]]>
[1] http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php
[2] http://wiki.knowledgetree.com/REST_Web_Service
posted at: 05:27 | path: /Coding/php | permanent link to this entry
