Loop from specific offer in XML file

Question

Is there a way to loop through an XML file from a specific element / node.

For instance if I want to start from <offer id="a2a9d7a3a520de69e8e06f3e53df1c49"> in this XML feed: http://pastebin.com/n5myzcz1

Is is then possible to load all offers after that ID?

Problems is, that the file is around 1GB, so I need to break it up on pieces — Simon Thomsen, Sep 06 '16 at 14:36
@RamRaider Do you have any type of tutorials on this or something that can lead me in the right direction? — Simon Thomsen, Sep 06 '16 at 14:38
use `XMLReader` from PHP, use NOT `simplexml_load_file()` it uses to much memory on a 1GB file — JustOnUnderMillions, Sep 06 '16 at 14:48
I'm already using that, the script is fine, I just need to find a solution to start from a specific element and loop from there — Simon Thomsen, Sep 06 '16 at 14:50
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1835177/how-to-use-xmlreader-in-php — JustOnUnderMillions, Sep 06 '16 at 15:03

Ricardo Velhote · Answer 1 · 2016-09-06T16:33:53.783

I was going to suggest XPath but since you mention that the file is 1GB, you should use a streaming parser such as XMLReader (which I now read that you are already using).

You are bound to have a linear search because you don't know where the element you want is so you have to go through all of them until you find it.

EDIT

Just an esoteric idea could be using shell_exec to grep the file to find the line where the ID is and then cutting the file from that line using sed or equivalent.

EDIT 2

Ahhhh, this was fun!!

$line = intval(shell_exec('grep -n a2a9d7a3a520de69e8e06f3e53df1c49 orders.xml | cut -d : -f1'));
$totalLines = intval(shell_exec('wc -l orders.xml'));
echo shell_exec("sed -n '".$line.",".$totalLines."p' orders.xml");

Maybe you can just put 9999999999 instead of caculating the total lines. Not saying you should of course ;) ;)

I don't know if this is faster than just going through the file with XMLReader but I guess it's up to you to decide if it's worth it.

I hope this can give you further ideas to solve your problem.

@SimonThomsen How did you work this out at the end? I am very curious to see what you came up with. Thanks ;) — Ricardo Velhote, Sep 26 '16 at 13:37

Loop from specific offer in XML file

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