How do I fix this PHP code? - php

Question

I have to create a live search on a website. I have to use PHP, but I have never studied it and I am pretty much a beginner in programming.
I have an XML-file as a database and the aim is to get node values and display them as suggestions as a user types in something. The problem with this code is that it spits out all of the node values onto the web page.
Here is the PHP code:
<?php
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load("collection.xml");
$books = $xmlDoc->getElementsByTagName("book");
$q = $_GET["q"];
if (strlen($q) > 0) {
$hint = "";
foreach ($books as $book) {
$name = $book->getElementsByTagName("name")->item(0)->nodeValue;
echo "$name <br/>";
}
}
if ($hint == "")
{
$response="no suggestion";
}
else
{
$response=$hint;
}
//output the response
echo $response;
?>
Here is the XML-file:
<books>
<book>
<name>Harry Potter</name>
<quantity> 50 </quantity>
<price>19.90</price>
</book>
<book>
<name>Casino Royale</name>
<quantity> 50 </quantity>
<price>12.99</price>
</book>
<book>
<name>The Great Gatsby</name>
<quantity> 40 </quantity>
<price>14.90</price>
</book>
</books>
Can someone please help me fix this issue so that I can continue working on my project. Thank you in advance for your time and help! Aprreciate it a lot!

Answer 1

The issue is here:
$hint = "";
foreach ($books as $book) {
$name = $book->getElementsByTagName("name")->item(0)->nodeValue;
echo "$name <br/>";
}
Notice that you have a "foreach loop" here. The "$name=$book...." line simply reads the value of that particular XML node and assigns it to the $name variable. Then you are doing a call to echo $name. So in essence, all you're doing here is reading the value of the XML node and printing it. No part of your code compares the $name to your search query ($q). It seems that what you want to happen is only print out books that somehow match $q.
In order to do that we need to apply some logic to your foreach loop to only print out values that match $q.
Here is a suggestion:
$hint = "";
foreach ($books as $book) {
$name = $book->getElementsByTagName("name")->item(0)->nodeValue;
// Let's only show this book if $q appears somewhere in $name.
if (strpos($name, $q) !== false && strpos($name, $q) >= 0)
{
echo $name . "<br />";
}
}