Parsing a single XML section using a query string with PHP - php

Question

I'm trying to retrieve a single section from an XML file using PHP.
Here's the code I'm using:
<?php
$articles = simplexml_load_file('articles.xml');
foreach ($articles as $articlecontent)
{
$title = $articlecontent->title;
$content = $articlecontent->content;
$author = $articlecontent->author;
$date = $articlecontent['date'];
echo "<h1>",$title,"</h1>\n",
"<p><i>",$date,"</i></p>\n",
"<p>",$content,"</p>\n",
"<p>",$author,"</p>\n",
"<p><time>",$date,"</time></p>\n"
;
}
?>
Which shows all the sections in the XML file, but how can I parse just one result but do so using a query string?
Example: articles.php?title=section-one will retrieve the XML section with the title "section-one"

Answer 1

You get the title from the query string by getting it from PHP's superglobal $_GET array, like this:
$title = false;
if (isset($_GET['title']))
{
$title = $_GET['title'];
}
and then the simplest way would be to compare it to the title from the XML file in your foreach loop.

Answer 2

Way to get title from url is using $_GET array, then to get required article by title i think you could use xpath which won't require foreach loop
$title = $_GET['title'];
// there should go some sanitizing
$articles = simplexml_load_file('articles.xml');
//search for article by title
//assuming that xml root tag is articles and article tag is article and searching by attribute named title
$foundArticles = $articles->xpath('articles/article[#title='.$title.']');
//query depends on xml structure
// now you have array of matched articles with matching title from url
foreach($foundArticles as $singleArticle)
{
//do printing here
}
This code is not tested, but principle should work.

Answer 3

To receive Query String Variable (in our case 'title') from URL you can use $_REQUEST also. Little bit corrected code (#user1597483) with some more advanced updates.
$articles = simplexml_load_file('articles.xml');
$title = "";
if(isset($_REQUEST['title'])) //receiving Query String from URL
$title = $_REQUEST['title'];
if(count($articles)):
//Fixed search means that will one return article if 'section-one' in title
//$result = $articles->xpath("//article[title='Section-one']");
//Match All Search means that will return all articles that contains 'section-one' in title
$result = $articles->xpath("//article[contains(translate(title, 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ', 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'),'".strtolower($title)."')]");
foreach ($result as $articleItem):
$title=$articleItem->title;
$content=$articleItem->content;
$author=$articleItem->author;
$date=$articleItem->date;
echo "<h1>",$title,"</h1>\n";
echo "<p><i>",$date,"</i></p>\n";
echo "<p>",$content,"</p>\n";
echo "<p>",$author,"</p>\n";
echo "<p><time>",$date,"</time></p>\n";
endforeach;
endif;
In the code above I have specified two types of filter through which you can get result with Specific Article by exact match or wild card type matching by contains function. And I have also used translate function which will convert value of title element to lowercase and also converted value of Query String Variable to lowercase. So that regardless of Upper/Lower case, condition will be checking with lowercase and if condition matched then resultant articles will be returned.

Answer 4

You can achieve that by inserting a condition into the foreach loop testing if the title-filter is in action and does not match. If so, skip that entry by using the continue keyword:
$titleFilter = trim(isset($_GET['title']) ? $_GET['title'] : '');
...
foreach ($articles as $articlecontent)
{
$title = $articlecontent->title;
if (strlen($titleFilter) and $title !== $titleFilter) {
continue;
}
...