Get data from OMDb API with xml - php

Question

I'l try to get the movie title and info from the omdb API. This is my code:
<?php
$enter = $_GET["enter"];
$content = file_get_contents("https://www.omdbapi.com/?s=$enter&r=xml");
$xml = simplexml_load_string($content);
if($xml) {
echo "<h2>" .$xml->title. "</h2>";
}
else
{
echo "Nothing found. Add the info manualy";
}
?>
The "enter" value is from the search form with AJAX. He create only an empty h2 tag. How can i get also the data from the API?
Thank you,
Julian

Answer 1

You should familiarize yourself with the structure of the xml to know how to access its elements. print_r(get_object_vars($xml)) will show you a structure like this:
Array
(
[#attributes] => Array
(
[totalResults] => 3651
[response] => True
)
[result] => Array
(
[0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[#attributes] => Array
(
[title] => World War Z
[year] => 2013
[imdbID] => tt0816711
[type] => movie
[poster] => https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTg0NTgxMjIxOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDM0MDY1OQ##._V1_SX300.jpg
)
)
[1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[#attributes] => Array
(
[title] => Captain America: Civil War
[year] => 2016
[imdbID] => tt3498820
[type] => movie
[poster] => https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ0MTgyNjAxMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNjUzMDkyODE#._V1_SX300.jpg
)
)
...
...
...
[9] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[#attributes] => Array
(
[title] => War
[year] => 2007
[imdbID] => tt0499556
[type] => movie
[poster] => https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTgzNTA4MTc3OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTA0ODk0MQ##._V1_SX300.jpg
)
)
)
)
So you receive an array with results where you need to pick from. Alternatively if you know the exact title the API has the t=title option which only returns a single result (see documentation).
So assuming you use the s=title option which returns multiple results, you can use something like this to pick information from the first result:
<?php
$enter = $_GET["enter"];
$content = file_get_contents("https://www.omdbapi.com/?s=$enter&r=xml");
$xml = simplexml_load_string($content);
# show the structure of the xml
# print_r(get_object_vars($xml));
if($xml) {
print "<h2>" .$xml->result[0]['title']. "</h2>";
print "<br>imdbID=" . $xml->result[0]['imdbID'] ;
} else {
echo "Nothing found. Add the info manualy";
}
?>