PHP - Fetch data from specific child elements in XML file

Question

I'm a PHP/developing novice and I haven't been able to find a tutorial with a solution to this particular problem.

I have a XML file from an API with product information for an online store. Each physical product has multiple "styles" that need to be listed on the same page. I want to do that using their id numbers.

Here's a simplified version of what my feed looks like:

<products>
  <product id="001">
    <name>Shirt 1 - Women's</name>
    <price>12.00</price>
    <color>blue</color>
  </product>

  <product id="002">
    <name>Shirt 1 - Men's</name>
    <price>12.00</price>
    <color>red</color>
  </product>
   ...
  <product id="023">
    <name>Shirt 12 - Women's</name>
    <price>15.00</price>
    <color>purple</color>
  </product>

  <product id="024">
    <name>Shirt 12 - Men's</name>
    <price>15.00</price>
    <color>yellow</color>
  </product>

</products>

So on shirt12.php, I would need to fetch just the info from <product id="023"> and <product id="024"> since those contain my information for the "Shirt 12" styles.

Using simplexml I'm able to fetch the data of one <product> using this code:

foreach ($products->product as $product) {
if ($product['id'] == '024') { 
  //display data using some code
  }
}

I have no clue how I'd do this for two ore more. If it can be done with simplexml, that would be great because I'm most familiar it. But if I need to use a different XML parsing method, I'm open to that as well, however it needs to be compatible with wordpress.

can you add other 'if' for 023? – mehdi nejati May 24 '13 at 09:48 — mehdi nejati, May 24 '13 at 09:48

Passerby · Answer 1 · 2013-05-25T09:04:22.323

Things can be easier with XPath:

$xml=simplexml_load_string(<<<XML
<products>
  <product id="001">
    <name>Shirt 1 - Women's</name>
    <price>12.00</price>
    <color>blue</color>
  </product>

  <product id="002">
    <name>Shirt 1 - Men's</name>
    <price>12.00</price>
    <color>red</color>
  </product>
  <product id="023">
    <name>Shirt 12 - Women's</name>
    <price>15.00</price>
    <color>purple</color>
  </product>

  <product id="024">
    <name>Shirt 12 - Men's</name>
    <price>15.00</price>
    <color>yellow</color>
  </product>

</products>
XML
);
foreach($xml->xpath('//product[starts-with(name/text(),"Shirt 12")]') as $product)
{
    echo $product->name;
    echo "\n";
    echo $product->price;
    echo "\n";
    echo $product->color;
    echo "\n\n";
}

Online Demo

Update:

If you need to fetch by id, just change the XPath:

foreach($xml->xpath('//product[@id="023" or @id="024"]') as $product)

Online Demo that also demonstrate how to fetch the ID attribute.

Can you show me how I'd do this JUST using the id numbers in ``? Unfortunately my XML file doesn't have each product named as nicely as my example. Also the product id numbers will be used as corresponding id numbers for the `
` or `

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

There are many ways to solve that, one of them is that you could make use of the in_array() function to test against multiple id values:

$ids = array('023', '024');

foreach ($product->product as $product) {
    if (in_array($product['id'], $ids)) { 
        //display data using some code
    }
}

See as well a related question: PHP If Statement with Multiple Conditions.

I choosed that one because you can use it in other situations, too and also to show that your problem is not specifically related to XML but more for PHP in itself.

I hope its helpful to you.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 24 '13 at 10:36

Do you mean like this?

foreach ($product->product as $product) {
if ($product['id'] == '023'||$product['id'] == '024') { 
  //display data using some code
  }
}

Also , not sure why you have a different php page for each id, if it's a product page it should be dynamic so

shirt.php?id=12

PHP - Fetch data from specific child elements in XML file

3 Answers3