Display data from external XML feed on website using PHP - php

Question

I need to display data from an external XML feed on my site but I have absolutely no idea where to start. What would be the full PHP code to grab the XML feed and print the following elements into my page:
<name></name>
<status></status>
<pin></pin>
<picture>
</picture>
<description></description>
<category name="skills">
<skill></skill>
</category>
<category name="tools">
<tool></tool>
<tool></tool>
<tool></tool>
</category>
<category name="subjects">
<subject></subject>
</category>

Answer 1

You can use php built in function called simplexml_load_string along with file_get_contents.
What the two functions do is convert the url xml feed to a string and then create an object stored into $xml.
Resource file_get_contents
Resource simplexml_load_string
$url = 'yourXMLfeed.xml';
$xml = file_get_contents($url);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);
You can then access your data inside <name></name>, etc like so:
echo $xml->name will print the data inside of the name tags.
If you have a nested xml feed you can also use foreach like so:
foreach($xml as $x):
echo $x->name
endforeach;
EDIT
Let say each of your <tool></tool> had data ie:
<tool>Wrench</tool> <tool>Hammer</tool> <tool>Screwdriver</tool>
You could do a quick foreach loop to get the data like so:
foreach($xml->category[1] as $tool) {
echo $tool.' ';
}
This would echo out Wrench Hammer Screwdriver