PHP in XML file (or PHP file as XML one) - php

Question

I have this code (part of bigger script):
flashvars.xmlSource = "datasource.xml";
datasource.xml looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Object>
<Contents>
<Source="address" Title="title"></Source>
<Description><h1>New hot Features</h1><p>The all new Piecemaker comes with lots of new features, making it even more slick.</p><p>Just to mention a few - you can now specify unlimited transition styles, include your own SWF and Video files, add hyperlinks to images and info texts with all special characters.</p><p>We also impoved the navigation and the animation with animated shadows and pixel-perfect transitions.</p></Description>
(...)
</Contents>
</Object>
I want to generate datasource.xml dynamically using foreach loop.
I've just changed the file extension to .php but this is not that easy ;)
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Funny or not, but try this one:
leave your file extension to be "xml"
where you wrote (...) write <? PHP CODE HERE ?>
So handle it as if it would be some html file. What I mean is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Object>
<Contents>
<Source="address" Title="title"></Source>
<Description><h1>New hot Features</h1><p>The all new Piecemaker comes with lots of new features, making it even more slick.</p><p>Just to mention a few - you can now specify unlimited transition styles, include your own SWF and Video files, add hyperlinks to images and info texts with all special characters.</p><p>We also impoved the navigation and the animation with animated shadows and pixel-perfect transitions.</p></Description>
<? create php loop here ?>
</Contents>
</Object>
Also note
this line
<Source="address" Title="title"></Source>
might be wrong (you assigned some value to the tagname), try
<Source name="address" Title="title"></Source>
or something like that.

Answer 2

As I see generating xml file with php could be done in this way - for example you'll create file datasource.xml which will be not a static xml file but xml with php code included with contents like
<?php //php code to generate any xml code as Text
// it can be whatever you need to generate
// for example
$content="<h1>New hot Features</h1><p>The all new Piecemaker comes with lots of new features, making it even more slick.</p><p>Just to mention a few - you can now specify unlimited transition styles, include your own SWF and Video files, add hyperlinks to images and info texts with all special characters.</p><p>We also impoved the navigation and the animation with animated shadows and pixel-perfect transitions.</p>";
$output="<Description>".$content."</Description>";
header('Content-type: application/xml');// this is most important php command which says that all output text is XML it must be called before any line of xml will be printed.
// So you need at first generate XML as text then call this command and echo contents of your xml file.
?>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Object>
<Contents>
<Source name="address" Title="title"></Source>
<? echo $output; ?>
</Contents>
</Object>
In order to allow php to execute php code inside XML file we need to add some directives to apache host configuration file. In my case I added
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
<FilesMatch "\.xml$">
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>
inside my virtual host configuration file, or you can place this command inside .htaccess file in your directory if Override of this param is allowed in your host configuration.
And about xml- to make sure it's ok you can use http://validator.w3.org/ or http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp to validate xml generated by your script.

Answer 3

Does this XML need to be a stored file somewhere on the server, or can you just pass it a string formatted like the XML you mentioned. You could write a function that generates the XML you're looking for and returns it, based on input and then call that like
function generateXML($input){
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Object><Contents>
<Source="address" Title="title"></Source><Whateverelse>' . $input;
$xml .= '</Whateverelse></Contents></Object>';
return $xml;}
flashvars.xmlSource = generateXML("This is whatever else");
If you need to actually generate and store a well formed XML document, or if your XML is fairly complex and you need to generate an object rather than just using a string, you can utilize one of the PHP libraries to do this like http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php