Use PHP to load XML Data into Oracle - php

Question

I'm fairly new to php although I've been programming for a couple years.
I'm working on a project and the end goal is to load certain elements of an xml file into an oracle table on a nightly basis. I have a script which runs nightly and saves a the file on my local machine. I've searched endlessly for answers but have been unsuccessful.
Here is an aggregated example of the xml file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Report account="7869" start_time="2012-02-23T00:00:00+00:00" end_time="2012-02-23T15:27:59+00:00" user="twilson" more_sessions="false">
<Session id="ID742247692" realTimeID="4306650378">
<Visitor id="5390643113837">
<ip>128.XXX.XX.XX</ip>
<agent>MSIE 8.0</agent>
</Visitor>
</Session>
<Session id="ID742247695" realTimeID="4306650379">
<Visitor id="7110455516320">
<ip>173.XX.XX.XXX</ip>
<agent>Chrome 17.0.963.56</agent>
</Visitor>
</Session>
</Report>
One thing to note is that the xml file will contain several objects which I will need to load into my table and the above example would just be for two rows of data. I'm familiar with the whole process of connecting and loading data into oracle and have setup similar scripts which perform ETL of txt. and csv. files using php. Unfortunately for me in this case the data is stored in xml. The approach I've taken when loading a csv. file is to load the data into an array and proceed from there.
I'm pretty certain that I can use something similar and perhaps create variable for each or something similar but am not really too sure how to do that with an xml. file.
$xml = simplexml_load_file('C:/Dev/report.xml');
echo $xml->Report->Session->Visitor->agent;
In the above code i'm trying to just return the agent associated with each visitor. This returns an error 'Trying to get property of non-object in C:\PHP\chatTest.php on line 11'
The end result would be for me to load the data into a table similar to the example I provided would be to load two rows into my table which would look similar to below however I think I can handle that if i'm able to get the data into an array or something similar.
IP|AGENT
128.XXX.XX.XX MSIE 8.0
173.XX.XX.XXX Chrome 17.0.963.56
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Revised Code:
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->load( 'C:/Dev/report.xml' );
$sessions = $doc->getElementsByTagName( "Session" );
foreach( $sessions as $session )
{
$visitors = $session->getElementsByTagName( "Visitor" );
foreach( $visitors as $visitor )
$sessionid = $session->getAttribute( 'realTimeID' );
{
$ips = $visitor->getElementsByTagName( "ip" );
$ip = $ips->item(0)->nodeValue;
$agents = $visitor->getElementsByTagName( "agent" );
$agent = $ips->item(0)->nodeValue;
echo "$sessionid- $ip- $agent\n";
}}
?>

Answer 1

The -> operator in PHP means that you are trying to invoke a field or method on an object. Since Report is not a method within $xml, you are receiving the error that you are trying to invoke a property on a non-object.
You can try something like this (don't know if it works, didn't test it and haven't written PHP for a long time, but you can google it):
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadXML($content);
foreach ($doc->getElementsByTagName('Session') as $node)
{
$agent = $node->getElementsByTagName('Visitor')->item(0)->getElementsByTagName('agent')->item(0)->nodeValue;
}
edit:
Adding stuff to an array in PHP is easy as this:
$arr = array();
$arr[] = "some data";
$arr[] = "some more data";
The PHP arrays should be seen as a list, since they can be resized on the fly.

Answer 2

I was able to figure this out using simplexml_load_file rather than the DOM approach. Although DOM works after modifying the Leon's suggestion the approach below is what I would suggest.
$xml_object = simplexml_load_file('C:/Dev/report.xml');
foreach($xml_object->Session as $session) {
foreach($session->Visitor as $visitor) {
$ip = $visitor->ip;
$agent = $visitor->agent;
}
echo $ip.','.$agent."\n";
}