Searching and displaying XML content with PHP

Question

I have an XML file filled with 'producers.'

Here is a sample of what the file looks like:

<producer>
   <name>John Doe's Fish Emporium!</name>
   <owner>John Doe</owner>
   <address>
      <civic>123</civic>
      <mailing>Example Drive</mailing>
      <town>Halifax</town>
      <province>Nova Scotia</province>
      <postal>A1B 2C3</postal>
      <phone>902-123-4567</phone>
      <fax>902-098-7654</fax>
      <email>john@example.com</email>
      <website>www.example.com</website>
   </address>
   <products>
      <product>Pollock (Saithe)</product>
      <product>Flounder/Sole</product>
      <product>Salmon, Farm Raised</product>
      <product>Mussels, Blue</product>
   </products>
   <exports>
      <region>Europe</region>
      <region>North America</region>
      <region>Pacific Rim</region>
      <region>United States</region>
   </exports>
</producer>

The user will enter a value into an html form, which will search the XML document for that keyword, then print out the entire producer. So for example if the user searches for the product Salmon, the search will spit out the entire producer above. How do I go about detecting where I am in the XML document, then echoing out the entire producer?

Thanks!

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

I am assuming your producer elements are direct children of producers root node. If not, adjust accordingly:

/producers/producer[descendant::*[contains(text(), "Salmon")]]

This will find all producer elements that have the text Salmon in any of it's child text nodes. This XPath allows you to search all the childnodes, e.g. region, town, product, etc - regardless of level.

See Implementing condition in XPath for boilerplate code.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 05 '11 at 13:51

0

This has already been answered many times, check out the related links to the right. Here's what you're going to need:

simplexml

DOM

XPath

answered Dec 05 '11 at 13:51

mseancole

1,662
4
16
26

I'm currently using SimpleXML but I don't see of any way of accessing the parent tags of an element. – jasonaburton Dec 05 '11 at 13:53
1

This probably should have been a comment and flagged the original question – Russell Saari Dec 05 '11 at 13:53
try xpath, as I said in my edit, this has been answered many times, I'd appreciate if you didn't downvote just because I answered your question with references instead of providing you with answers you can easily find. – mseancole Dec 05 '11 at 13:55
@Russell Saari I'll do that in the future. – mseancole Dec 05 '11 at 13:56
I suppose I should have searched for similar questions. Apologies. I didn't downvote you. – jasonaburton Dec 05 '11 at 13:56
Then my apologies for jumping to conclusions, not sure why I received the downvote then. – mseancole Dec 05 '11 at 13:58
I'll upvote you to balance it out. I believe the DOM is what I need as well. Thanks. – jasonaburton Dec 05 '11 at 13:58
No worries at all this forum is just pretty strict about it I know from past experience :) – Russell Saari Dec 05 '11 at 14:03

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 05 '11 at 14:05

0

This might helpful :-

$obj   = simplexml_load_string(...);
$expr  = "/producer/products/product[contains(text(),'salmon')]/../..";
$found = $obj->xpath($expr);

enjoy, have fun!

answered Dec 05 '11 at 14:05

ajreal

46,720
11
89
119

Searching and displaying XML content with PHP

3 Answers3