Parse a PHP file as an XML file? - php

Question

I have been working on a project that displays data in an XML file. (It's kind of like an API). I know how to parse XML with PHP, and how to make an XML file in PHP, but they don't work together. :)
Basically, I have two files: parse.php and xml.php.
xml.php grabs info from a MySQL database, and outputs it as XML.
parse.php loads and parses xml.php and outputs it as HTML.
If I run parse.php, it does not load xml.php. However, if I copy the outputted XML (from xml.php) and save it as a xml.xml file (and change the filename in parse.php to 'xml.xml') it works. I'd really appreciate any help.
Content of parse.php:
<?php
$doc = "xml.php";
$doc = #simplexml_load_file($doc) or die("Server Error: Recipe not found!");
$title = $doc->title;
echo $title
?>
Content of xml.php:
<?php
header("Content-type: text/xml");
$dbc = mysql... //gets data from database
echo "<!DOCTYPE..."; //xml stuff here
echo "<title>" . $dataFromMySQL . "</title>";
?>
The database connection works, and the DOCTYPE in the XML is ok, so that's not the problem.
Again, I only get the problem when I generate XML dynamically using PHP. If it's a .XML file, it works fine.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks.

Answer 1

simplexml_load_file will try to actually load the php contents of the xml.php file. It will not run that file first. You need to do some rewriting or use this ugly solution:
ob_start();
include 'xml.php';
$xml = ob_get_clean();
$doc = simplexml_load_string($xml);
//...
NOTE: I like #lonesomeday's proposed solution better, it will just require more rewriting.

Answer 2

#simplexml_load_file($doc);
That is where your problem is. This does not execute xml.php, but attempts to parse that file -- the PHP code that you've written -- as XML. Obviously (since it isn't XML) this won't work.
You have to find a way of getting the output from executing xml.php into parse.php.
The easy way to do this would be to change all your echo calls into $xml .= calls, and simply include xml.php into parse.php.
// xml.php
$xml = '';
$xml .= "<!DOCTYPE..."; //xml stuff here
$output .= "<title>" . $dataFromMySQL . "</title>";
// parse.php
include('xml.php');
simplexml_load_string($xml);
Note that your problem here shows the foolishness of using the error suppression operator #. If you hadn't used it, PHP would have shown you various errors which would have helped you to realise what the problem was.
Addendum: it occurs to me that the best way actually is to forget about the pointless XML step along the way and just convert the database output into HTML.

Answer 3

If you want to do this without rewriting xml.php, you can get PHP to process the file by accessing via url:
$doc = file_get_contents("http://localhost/xml.php");

Answer 4

You're literally loading the local file. Unless you evaluate it, the code doesn't run, so you'll just get the code itself.
You could use CURL to download xml.php over HTTP, or you could make the XML-generation component of the xml.php a callable function which you simply include and execute.
parse.php:
<?php
include('xml.inc');
$doc = #simplexml_load_string(xml_function()) or die("Error");
echo $doc->title;
xml.php:
<?php
include('xml.inc');
header("Content-type: text/xml");
echo xml_function();
xml.inc:
<?php
function xml_function() {
$dbc = mysql... //gets data from database
$xml = "<!DOCTYPE..."; //xml stuff here
$xml .= "<title>" . $dataFromMySQL . "</title>";
return $xml;
}
But... even that seems silly, honestly, when you could have both output methods connect to the same data and skip a generation/parse step. Simply output HTML/XML conditionally.