XML source generated by PHP is messy [duplicate] - php

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Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
format xml string
I'm generating an XML page like so:
header('Content-Type: text/html');
$xmlpage = '<?xml version="1.0" charset="utf-8"?>';
$xmlpage .= '<conv>';
$xmlpage .= '<at>6 January 2012 12:00</at>';
$xmlpage .= '<rate>1.56317</rate>';
$xmlpage .= '<from>';
$xmlpage .= '<code>'.$from.'</code>';
$xmlpage .= '<curr>Pound Sterling</curr>';
$xmlpage .= '<loc>UK</loc>';
$xmlpage .= '<amnt>'.$amnt.'</amnt>';
$xmlpage .= '</from>';
$xmlpage .= '</conv>';
echo $xmlpage;
When viewing the page source, it looks terrible:
<?xml version="1.0" charset="utf-8"?><conv><at>6 January 2012 12:00</at><rate>1.56317</rate><from><code>USD</code><curr>Pound Sterling</curr><loc>UK</loc><amnt>23</amnt></from><to><code>GBP</code><curr>United States Dollar</curr><loc>USA</loc><amnt>14.73</amnt></to></conv>
How can I make this so it's properly formatted and indented?

Answer 1

Add newlines with the \r\n or only \n characters. You'll need to place your strings in double quotes ("") for it to work, so either replace the double-quotes inside the strings with single ones ('), escape the double quotes (\"), add ."\r\n" as a linebreak or use HEREDOC.
Building your XML with a XML generator like the built-in SimpleXML will prevent these sort and numerous other types of problems and is usually far easier than building it by hand with strings.

Answer 2

You could:
Do it yourself by adding whitespace characters to your strings (\n, \t).
Output all your XML with a HEREDOC
You could create or even generate a DOMDocument and use saveXML()
The first two are quick and dirty (heredoc's better). The latter is more robust, but more code.

Answer 3

Use a HEREDOC. it'll be far easier to read than repeated string concatenation, allows tabs/multilines, and does variable interpolation for you:
$xmlpage = <<<EOL
<?xml version="1.0" charset="utf-8"?>
<conv>
<at>6 January 2012 12:00</at>
<rate>1.56317</rate>
<from>
<code>$from</code>
<curr>Pound Sterling</curr>
<loc>UK</loc>
<amnt>$amnt</amnt>
</from>
</conv>
EOL;

Answer 4

Use a stylesheet and an XML viewer to view it.

Answer 5

add a \n after every $xmlpage. You should be able to view it properly after the echo.
e.g.
$xmlpage = "<?xml version="1.0" charset="utf-8"?>\n";
$xmlpage .= "<conv>\n";
$xmlpage .= "<at>6 January 2012 12:00</at>\n";
$xmlpage .= "<rate>1.56317</rate>\n";

Answer 6

The simplest way would be to add the appropriate whitespace to the beginning of the strings, and the newlines to the ends.
$xmlpage = '<?xml version="1.0" charset="utf-8"?>';
$xmlpage .= '<conv>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= "\t" . '<at>6 January 2012 12:00</at>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= "\t" . '<rate>1.56317</rate>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= '<from>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= "\t" . '<code>'.$from.'</code>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= "\t" . '<curr>Pound Sterling</curr>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= "\t" . '<loc>UK</loc>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= "\t" . '<amnt>'.$amnt.'</amnt>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= '</from>' . "\n";
$xmlpage .= '</conv>';
Or something along those lines, depending on your desired output.

Answer 7

Here's my prettify function, which formats for output. You can modify it to suit your needs.
function prettifyXML( $xml )
{
// Break our XML up into sections of newlines.
$xml = preg_replace( '/(<[^\/][^>]*?[^\/]>)/', "\n" . '\1', $xml );
$xml = preg_replace( '/(<\/[^\/>]*>|<[^\/>]*?\/>)/', '\1' . "\n", $xml );
$xml = str_replace( "\n\n", "\n", $xml );
$xml_chunks = explode( "\n", $xml );
$indent_depth = 0;
$open_tag_regex = '/<[^\/\?][^>]*>/';
$close_tag_regex = '/(<\/[^>]*>|<[^>]*\/>)/';
// Fix the indenting.
foreach ( $xml_chunks as $index => $xml_chunk )
{
$close_tag_count = preg_match( $close_tag_regex, $xml_chunk );
$open_tag_count = preg_match( $open_tag_regex, $xml_chunk );
if ( $open_tag_count >= $close_tag_count )
{
$temp_indent_depth = $indent_depth;
}
else
{
$temp_indent_depth = $indent_depth - $close_tag_count;
}
$xml_chunks[ $index ] = str_repeat( "\t", $temp_indent_depth ) . $xml_chunk;
$indent_depth += $open_tag_count - $close_tag_count;
}
$xml = implode( "\n", $xml_chunks );
// Add tokens for attributes and values.
$attribute_regex = '/([\w:]+\="[^"]*")/';
$value_regex = '/>([^<]*)</';
$value_span_token = '########';
$attribute_span_token = '########';
$span_close_token = '########';
$xml = preg_replace( $value_regex, '>' . $value_span_token . '\1' . $span_close_token . '<', $xml );
$xml = preg_replace( $attribute_regex, $attribute_span_token . '\1' .$span_close_token, $xml );
$xml = htmlentities( $xml );
// Replace the tokens that we added previously with their HTML counterparts.
$xml = str_replace( $value_span_token, '<span class="value">', $xml );
$xml = str_replace( $attribute_span_token, '<span class="attribute">', $xml );
$xml = str_replace( $span_close_token, '</span>', $xml );
return $xml;
}
It's been relatively well tested to handle edge cases, though it's not highly efficient because it's only for viewing logs.