Oodle PHP XML request returns nothing - php

Question

I have found very little documentation on this API so I have came here with the hopes that someone knows how to use this thing. When I try this nothing shows up. For now I am just trying to display the title of the first listing. Here is my code:
<?php
$url = "http://api.oodle.com/api/v2/listings?key=MYKEY&region=sf&category=sale/electronics&q=ipod";
$response = file_get_contents($url);
echo $response->element[0]->title;
?>
And here is a link to the XML: http://api.oodle.com/api/v2/listings?key=TEST&region=chicago&category=vehicle/car
Thanks!

Answer 1

You have to parse the XML before you can access it like that.
Something like the following (untested!)
<?php
$url = "http://api.oodle.com/api/v2/listings?key=MYKEY&region=sf&category=sale/electronics&q=ipod";
$response = file_get_contents($url);
$xmlDoc = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
echo $xmlDoc->element[0]->title;
?>
In this example I'm using SimpleXML.
In simpler terms, by doing $xmlDoc = new SimpleXMLElement($response) we're telling PHP that $response contains XML that should be parsed into structures that can be programmatically accessed.
In this case $xmlDoc becomes a SimpleXMLElement object, that you can use as per documentation: http://php.net/manual/en/class.simplexmlelement.php