Parse Xml file for comparison - php

Question

ok this is driving me crazy.
I have been trying to parse a xml file into a specific array or object so I can compare it to a similar file to test for differences.
However I have had no luck. I have been attempting to use SimpleXMLIterator and SimpleXMLElement to do this.
Here are some samples:
<xml>
//This is the first record of 1073
<viddb>
<movies>1074</movies>
<movie>
<title>10.5</title>
<origtitle>10.5</origtitle>
<year>2004</year>
<genre>Disaster</genre>
<release></release>
<mpaa></mpaa>
<director>John Lafia</director>
<producers>Howard Braunstein, Jeffrey Herd</producers>
<actors>Kim Delaney, Fred Ward, Ivan Sergei</actors>
<description>An earthquake reaching a 10.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, strikes the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. A large portion of land falls into the ocean, and the situation is worsened by aftershocks and tsunami.</description>
<path>E:\www\Media\Videos\Disaster\10.5.mp4</path>
<length>164</length>
<size>3648</size>
<resolution>640x272</resolution>
<framerate>29.97</framerate>
<videocodec>AVC</videocodec>
<videobitrate>2966</videobitrate>
<label>Roku Media</label>
<poster>images/10.5.jpg</poster>
</movie>
Here is the object this record produces using $iter = new SimpleXMLIterator($xml, 0, TRUE);
object(SimpleXMLIterator)#71 (1) {
["viddb"] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#72 (2) {
["movies"] => string(4) "1074"
["movie"] => array(1074) {
[0] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#73 (19) {
["title"] => string(4) "10.5"
["origtitle"] => string(4) "10.5"
["year"] => string(4) "2004"
["genre"] => string(8) "Disaster"
["release"] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#1158 (0) {
}
["mpaa"] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#1159 (0) {
}
["director"] => string(10) "John Lafia"
["producers"] => string(31) "Howard Braunstein, Jeffrey Herd"
["actors"] => string(35) "Kim Delaney, Fred Ward, Ivan Sergei"
["description"] => string(212) "An earthquake reaching a 10.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, strikes the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. A large portion of land falls into the ocean, and the situation is worsened by aftershocks and tsunami."
["path"] => string(37) "E:\www\Media\Videos\Disaster\10.5.mp4"
["length"] => string(3) "164"
["size"] => string(4) "3648"
["resolution"] => string(7) "640x272"
["framerate"] => string(5) "29.97"
["videocodec"] => string(3) "AVC"
["videobitrate"] => string(4) "2966"
["label"] => string(10) "Roku Media"
["poster"] => string(15) "images/10.5.jpg"
}
What I'm trying to produce (at the moment) is a single level associative array for each movie . All the examples I've read on and followed always produced an array of arrays, which is much more difficult to work with.
This is were i'm at :
$iter = new SimpleXMLIterator($xml, 0, TRUE);
Zend_Debug::dump($iter);
//so far xpath has not worked for me, I can't get $result to return anything
$result = $iter->xpath('/xml/viddb/movies/movie');
$movies = array();
for ($iter->rewind(); $iter->valid(); $iter->next()) {
foreach ($iter->getChildren() as $key => $value) {
//I can get each movie title to echo but when I try to put them into an
// array it only has the last record
echo $value->title . '<br />';
$movies['title'] = $value->title;
}
}
return $movies;
I feel like I'm missing something simple and obvious...as usual :)
[EDIT]
I found my error, I was tripping over the array of objects thing. I had to cast the data I wanted as a string to make it work how I wanted. Just for info here is what I came up with to put me on the track I wanted:
public function indexAction() {
$xml = APPLICATION_PATH . '/../data/Videos.xml';
$iter = new SimpleXMLElement($xml, 0, TRUE);
$result = $iter->xpath('//movie');
$movies = array();
foreach ($result as $key => $movie) {
$movies[$key + 1] = (string) $movie->title;
}
Zend_Debug::dump($movies, 'Movies');
}

Answer 1

XPATH is the answer you are looking for. I think the reason your XPATH isn't working is because you are looking for a movie node under the movies node when the movies node does not have any children.
Edit: Think it might be easier to just use a foreach loop instead of the iterator. I had to look up the iterator as I had never seen it before. Been using simplxml and xpath for a while too. Also, I believe you should only use SimpleXMLElement if you are planning on editing the XML as well. If you simply want to read it for comparison, best to use simplexml_load_file. You can also change your xpath to simply.
xpath('//movie');

Answer 2

If you just need to compare the entire file contents, read the contents of both files into a string and do a string comparison. Otherwise, you can do the same at a lower level of the document by getting the innerXML of any node.