Plesk XML formatting - php

Question

In PHP i have this code for making a XML header for the plesk API.
$request = <<<EOF
<packet version="1.6.7.0">
<mail>
<update>
<set>
<filter>
<site-id>$site_id</site-id>
<mailname>
<name>$name</name>
<autoresponder>
<enabled>true</enabled>
<subject>$subject</subject>
<text>$mail_body</text>
<end_date>$date</end_date>
</autoresponder>
</mailname>
</filter>
</set>
</update>
</mail>
</packet>
EOF;
However i get this response: 1014 Parser error: Cannot parse the XML from the source specified
I have put the xml into a formatting of 2, 3 ,4 and tab spacing and it doesnt seem to be able to parse it.
What am i doing wrong?

Answer 1

You can't guess to create a valid XML by string concatenation, especially when you have complex contents like an email text.
No all characters are allowed inside XML tags: you have to properly escape not-allowed characters. Fortunately, php have some parser that do this job for you.
First of all, create an empty XML template (check its validity using a XML validator):
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<packet version="1.6.7.0">
<mail>
<update>
<set>
<filter>
<site-id/>
<mailname>
<name/>
<autoresponder>
<enabled/>
<subject/>
<text/>
<end_date/>
</autoresponder>
</mailname>
</filter>
</set>
</update>
</mail>
</packet>
';
Then, load it into a DOMDocument object and init a DOMXPath object:
$dom = new DomDocument();
$dom->loadXML( $xml );
$xpath = new DOMXPath( $dom );
Then, find each node that you want to change and set/update its node value:
$nodes = $xpath->query( 'mail/update/set/filter/site-id' );
$nodes->item(0)->nodeValue = $site_id;
$nodes = $xpath->query( 'mail/update/set/filter/mailname/name' );
$nodes->item(0)->nodeValue = $name;
For the <autoresponder> children, you can perform a loop through each child, using * at the end of your search pattern:
$nodes = $xpath->query( 'mail/update/set/filter/mailname/autoresponder/*' );
foreach( $nodes as $node )
{
if( 'enabled' == $node->nodeName )
{
$node->nodeValue = 'true';
}
elseif( 'subject' == $node->nodeName )
{
$node->nodeValue = $subject;
}
elseif( 'text' == $node->nodeName )
{
$cdata = $dom->createCDATASection( $mail_body );
$node->appendChild( $cdata );
}
elseif( 'end_date' == $node->nodeName )
{
$node->nodeValue = $date;
}
}
Note the different syntax adopted for mail body: I use a CDATA node here: if your XML doesn't allow CDATA, replace it with standard ->nodeValue syntax. Or — instead — you can have to use CDATA method for all the nodes.
When the XML is ready, you can echo it by:
echo $dom->saveXML();
DOMXPath allow to perform complex searches in the XML tree: it's not mandatory in your case, because you start from a short, empty, unambiguous template. I use it for demonstration purpose, but you can replace a line like this:
$nodes = $xpath->query( 'mail/update/set/filter/site-id' );
with:
$nodes = $dom->getElementsByTagName( 'site-id' );
and it will work fine.
Read more about DOMDocument
Read more about DOMXPath