preg match for xml output node - php

Question

I have the following script that uses the api on hostip.info. The page parses an xml readout of a user location based on the ip address. In my function everything is working except for the city.
preg_match("#<Hostip>(\s)*<gml:name>(.*?)</gml:name>#si",$xml,$city_match);
I have narrowed it down to my preg_match being wrong but I'm not sure how to fix it. Here is a sample xml output: http://api.hostip.info/?ip=12.215.42.19
<?php
function getCountryCity()
{
if(isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) && strlen($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) > 0) {
$ipAddr = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
// verify the IP address
ip2long($ipAddr)== -1 || ip2long($ipAddr) === false ? trigger_error("Invalid IP", E_USER_ERROR) : "";
$ipDetail=array();
// get the XML result from hostip.info
$xml = file_get_contents("http://api.hostip.info/?ip=".$ipAddr);
// get the city name inside the node <gml:name> and </gml:name>
preg_match("#<Hostip>(\s)*<gml:name>(.*?)</gml:name>#si",$xml,$city_match);
$ipDetail['city'] = $city_match[1];
// get the country name inside the node <countryName> and </countryName>
preg_match("#<countryName>(.*?)</countryName>#si",$xml,$country_match);
$ipDetail['country'] = $country_match[1];
// get the country name inside the node <countryName> and </countryName>
preg_match("#<countryAbbrev>(.*?)</countryAbbrev>#si",$xml,$cc_match);
$ipDetail['country_code'] = $cc_match[1];
// return the array containing city, country and country code
return $ipDetail;
} else {
return false;
}
}
$ipDetail = getCountryCity();
$user_city = $ipDetail['city'];
$user_country = $ipDetail['country'];
$user_cc = $ipDetail['country_code'];
echo $user_country.' ('.$user_cc.')';
echo $user_city;
?>

Answer 1

XPATH is a dream for this kind of stuff. Google "SimpleXML PHP Tutorial" if this is new to you. Basically:
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($yourXML);
$user_city = $xml->xpath('//gml:name/text()');
$user_country= $xml->xpath('//countryName/text()');
$cc= $xml->xpath('//countryAbbrev/text()');
I find XPATH queries to be much easier to write than RegEx.
Sorry this doesn't answer your question as directly as you want. tried to post in a comment but the formatting gets totally screwed up

Answer 2

preg_match_all("#<gml:name>(.*?)</gml:name>#si",$xml,$city_match);
just remove <Hostip>(\s)* and use preg_match_all it will take all the tags. Then you can select one you need in array.

Answer 3

function getCountryCity() {
if(isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) && strlen($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) > 0) {
$user_ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$response = file_get_contents('http://api.hostip.info/?ip='.$user_ip);
$user_details = array();
$xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->loadXml($response);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($xml);
$path = '/HostipLookupResultSet/gml:featureMember/Hostip/';
// create values for array
$ip = $xpath->evaluate($path . 'ip')->item(0)->nodeValue;
$city = $xpath->evaluate($path . 'gml:name')->item(0)->nodeValue;
$countryName = $xpath->evaluate($path . 'countryName')->item(0)->nodeValue;
$countryAbbrev = $xpath->evaluate($path . 'countryAbbrev')->item(0)->nodeValue;
// assign values to array
$user_details['ip'] = $ip;
$user_details['city'] = $city;
$user_details['countryName'] = $countryName;
$user_details['countryAbbrev'] = $countryAbbrev;
return $user_details;
} else {
return false;
}
}