Member Avatar for daviddoria

Please excuse my newness. Currently I know how to execute a php script by simply naming the script [filename].php and browsing to that file on my webserver. I have also learned how to parse and display an xml file using php. What I want to do is have a .xml file like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<bookstore>
  <book category="COOKING">
    <title lang="en">Everyday Italian</title>
    <author>Giada De Laurentiis</author>
    <year>2005</year>
    <price>30.00</price>
  </book>
  <book category="CHILDREN">
    <title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
    <author>J K. Rowling</author>
    <year>2005</year>
    <price>29.99</price>
  </book>
</bookstore>

Current I can display all of the information like:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("test.xml");

echo $xml->getName() . "<br />";

foreach($xml->children() as $child)
  {
  foreach($child->children() as $subchild)
    {
    echo $subchild->getName() . ": " . $subchild . "<br />";
    }
  }
?>

But instead, what I want to do is on one page, say bookstore.html, list all of the book titles. Then if I click on a book title, I want to display a new page with all of the information about that book. The only way I can figure out to do this is to manually make a [booktitle].php for each book, but that is completely defeating the purpose of using xml :)

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

David

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by P0lT10n
Member Avatar for rje7 
<?php$xml = simplexml_load_file("test.xml"); echo $xml->getName() . "<br />";
 foreach($xml->children() as $child)  {
  foreach($child->children() as $subchild)    {
    echo "<a href=bookdetails.php?".$child->getName().">".$child->getName()"</a>";
    }
  }
?>

in the bookdetails.php use $_GET to retrive the parameter value. then use this value to fetch the matching data from the XML file.

Edited by rje7 because: n/a
Member Avatar for daviddoria

I got the first part working:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("bookstore.xml");

foreach($xml->children() as $child)
  {
  echo "<a href=bookdetails.php?title=" . $child->title . ">" . $child->title . "</a> <br/>";
  }
?>

(I believe what I have done is pass a named parameter where the code you posted passed an unnamed parameter - is this correct?)

The above code lists all of the book titles and passes the title as a parameter to the bookdetails.php page.

However, now I need to get the child that has a 'title' that matches the 'title' parameter in bookdetails.php. I don't want to have to iterate through all of the children of the root element and compare their titles to the parameter - there must be a better way :)

Thanks for your help so far!

David

Edited by daviddoria because: n/a
Member Avatar for daviddoria

This works (to display the author of a particular title):

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("bookstore.xml");

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = 'Everyday Italian']"); 

echo $res[0]->author

?>

So I tried this:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("bookstore.xml");

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = $_GET['title']]"); 

echo $res[0]->author

?>

after clicking the link which expands to

bookdetails.php?title="Everyday Italian"

but I get a 500 error.

Did I get something wrong in the GET syntax?

Thanks,

David

Member Avatar for P0lT10n

do this... assing an id to every book and then use <a href="bookdetails.php?id=".$id.""> I don't know about 500 error... maybe you done to many requests !

Edited by P0lT10n because: n/a
Member Avatar for rje7

This works (to display the author of a particular title):

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("bookstore.xml");

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = 'Everyday Italian']"); 

echo $res[0]->author

?>

So I tried this:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("bookstore.xml");

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = $_GET['title']]"); 

echo $res[0]->author

?>

after clicking the link which expands to

bookdetails.php?title="Everyday Italian"

but I get a 500 error.

Did I get something wrong in the GET syntax?

Thanks,

David

500 error is due to error in the PHP script.

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore...

in the above snipped $res variable is not an array. so it can store only one value at a time.

echo $res[0]->author

this line should be like

echo $res->author

but in your case $res will not contain direct data. data like author are contained within the <author>... tags. $xml->xpath ("....") should include "author". something like this.

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = $_GET['title']]/author");

now

echo $res

should print the author name.

pardon me if the above code snipped is wrong. i'm not sure of the syntax of the parameter.. hope i've got it right.

Member Avatar for daviddoria

@P0lT10n
Thanks for the suggestion. It seems like extra work though to add an id when there is already a unique field for each book.

@rje7
The error seems to happen in the xpath line (when I comment the echo line after it, the 500 error still occurs, then when I comment the xpath line itself, the error goes away).

I was told to drop the ' ' around "title" in your suggestion:
i.e.

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = $_GET['title']]/author");
$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = $_GET[title]]/author");

(I tried it both ways, both give 500 errors)

My original line ( to get the whole object instead of just the author) also produces the 500 error:

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = $_GET[title]]");

I did this:

echo $_GET['title']

to make sure the GET is working correctly and indeed it is.

Any more thoughts?

Thanks,

David

Member Avatar for P0lT10n

do this

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = ".$_GET['title']."]");
Edited by P0lT10n because: n/a
Member Avatar for daviddoria

I actually had to change it to :

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = '".$_GET["title"]."']");

(added single quotes around the GET part of the command string).

Thanks for all of the help!

Member Avatar for P0lT10n

I actually had to change it to :

$res = $xml->xpath("/bookstore/book[title = '".$_GET["title"]."']");

(added single quotes around the GET part of the command string).

Thanks for all of the help!

what i told you !

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