PHP call a url returning XML/JSON - php

Question

I am absolute beginner in PHP. Sorry for a very basic API question. I am stuck while coding at a point where I need to call a URL which will return me an XML or a JSON. Now I have to capture that in a variable.
For an example, I have written the following code:
class Search {
private $documents = array();
public function __construct() {
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load("solr.xml");
.....
Now I am directly loading an XML. I dont want to do that, instead:
Step1: I want to call a http url which returns me an XML or JSON.
Step2: I need to store that in some variable like xmlDoc above
Step3: and later ofcourse I want to parse it.
I have no issues with step 3 but I just need some pointers or help as to how can I accomplish step 1 and 2?

Answer 1

load should accept a URL as a parameter.
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load('http://example.com/path/to/file.xml');
Or, you can use file_get_contents to download a URL to a string.
$xml = file_get_contents('http://example.com/path/to/file.xml');
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->loadXML($xml);
Or for JSON:
$json = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://example.com/path/to/file.json'));

Answer 2

For doing this with Json you first need a page which will have some json variables.
You can do this by yourself by typing:
$jsonVar = array('var1','var2'); // several variables
echo encode_json($jsonVar);
You can access these variables by typing:
$jsonUrl = 'http://example.com/json.php';
$jsonUrl = json_decode(file_get_contents($jsonUrl));
To display one of these variables you can type:
echo $jsonUrl[1]; // you can use print_r($jsonUrl); //for displaying the right array numbers to access the vars