XML parser

[Joshua Morgan]

Hey all,

I want to create my own XML parser that is completely independent of
PHP version (i want it to run on both PHP 4 and 5), and to also not
require any dependencies (so that the user DOESN'T have to compile php
with --with-xml).

Can someone point me in the right direction as to how I can go about
this?

Thanks,

Joshua Morgan

[Andy Hassall]

On 27 Feb 2006 15:45:05 -0800, "Joshua Morgan" <jo***********@gmail.com> wrote:

I want to create my own XML parser that is completely independent of
PHP version (i want it to run on both PHP 4 and 5), and to also not
require any dependencies (so that the user DOESN'T have to compile php
with --with-xml).

Can someone point me in the right direction as to how I can go about
this?

If you really want to write one yourself, perhaps for fun (?!) then:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204/

And then you probably want to look up "DOM" and "SAX" parsers for the two main
approaches to parsing XML.

Alternatively you can avoid re-inventing the wheel:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pure+php+xml+parser

(Is it really so much of a hardship to compile with XML support though? PHP4
even comes with a bundled copy of the expat library, and PHP5 is a bit fiddly
to compile _without_ XML support, IIRC, since some other extensions rely on it)

--
Andy Hassall :: an**@andyh.co.uk :: http://www.andyh.co.uk
http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space :: disk and FTP usage analysis tool

[Chung Leong]

Joshua Morgan wrote:

Hey all,

I want to create my own XML parser that is completely independent of
PHP version (i want it to run on both PHP 4 and 5), and to also not
require any dependencies (so that the user DOESN'T have to compile php
with --with-xml).

Can someone point me in the right direction as to how I can go about
this?

Thanks,

Joshua Morgan

Are you parsing XML files of a particular schema or you want a general
XML parser? For the former purpose, I have often found it quite easy to
extract the necessary info using regular expressions.

[Joshua Morgan]

A general XML parser, and that is actually what I was considering
doing, using regular expression to pull out the data and put it into a
nice array that can be used by some functions.

[Tomi Holger Engdahl]

"Joshua Morgan" <jo***********@gmail.com> writes:

A general XML parser, and that is actually what I was considering
doing, using regular expression to pull out the data and put it into a
nice array that can be used by some functions.

You can find examples of reading XML files using three different
techniques (including that regular expression method) at this
article:

Reading and writing the XML DOM with PHP
Using the DOM library, SAX parser and regular expressions
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...-lnxw06XML-PHP

--
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at
http://www.epanorama.net/

[Oli Filth]

Tomi Holger Engdahl said the following on 28/02/2006 12:01:

"Joshua Morgan" <jo***********@gmail.com> writes:

A general XML parser, and that is actually what I was considering
doing, using regular expression to pull out the data and put it into a
nice array that can be used by some functions.

You can find examples of reading XML files using three different
techniques (including that regular expression method) at this
article:

Reading and writing the XML DOM with PHP
Using the DOM library, SAX parser and regular expressions
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...-lnxw06XML-PHP

And as that article says, use of regular expressions to "parse" XML is a
bad idea unless you're absolutely sure that the XML string/file is
well-formed and valid.
--
Oli

[Joshua Morgan]

Thanks, the DOM method seems the way to go, but is the DOMDocument
object supported in PHP4?

[Tony Marston]

Yes. Take a look at http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.domxml.php

--
Tony Marston

http://www.tonymarston.net
"Joshua Morgan" <jo***********@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@i39g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

Thanks, the DOM method seems the way to go, but is the DOMDocument
object supported in PHP4?