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PHP

Serializing XML With PHP
By: Melonfire
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    2004-04-14

    Table of Contents:
  • Serializing XML With PHP
  • A Twist In The Tale
  • Anatomy Class
  • Total Satisfaction
  • No Attribution
  • An Object Lesson
  • Not My Type
  • Travelling In Reverse
  • Keeping It Simple
  • Linking Out

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    Serializing XML With PHP - Travelling In Reverse


    (Page 8 of 10 )

    Good things come in twos: Mickey and Donald, Tom and Jerry, yin and yang. It's no surprise then that XML_Serializer has a doppelganger of its own. Called XML_Unserializer, this class can take an XML document and convert it into a series of nested PHP structures, suitable for use in a PHP script.

    In order to understand how this works, consider the following XML document:


    <?xml version='1.0'? >
    <library>
     
    <book id="MFRE001">
      
    <title>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</title>
      
    <author>Arthur Conan Doyle</author>
      
    <price currency="USD">24.95</price>
     
    </book>
     
    <book id="MFRE002">
      
    <title>Life of Pi</title>
      
    <author>Yann Martel</author>
      
    <price currency="USD">7.99</price>
     
    </book>
     
    <book id="MFRE003">
      
    <title>Europe on a Shoestring</title>
      
    <author>Lonely Planet</author>
      
    <price currency="USD">16.99</price>
     
    </book>
    </library>

    Now, in order to convert this XML document into a PHP structure, simply put XML_Unserializer to work on it, as below:


    <?php
     
    // include class file
    include("Unserializer.php");
     
    // create object
    $unserializer = &new XML_Unserializer();
     
    // unserialize the document
    $result = $unserializer->unserialize("library.xml", true);    
     
    // dump the result
    $data = $unserializer->getUnserializedData();
    print_r($data);
     
    ? >

    Here, the unserialize() method accepts either a string containing XML data or an XML file (set the second argument to false or true depending on which one you are passing) and returns a PHP structure representing the XML document. Here's what the output looks like:


    Array
    (
        
    [book] => Array
            
    (
                
    [0] => Array
                    
    (
                        
    [title] => The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
                        
    [author] => Arthur Conan Doyle
                        
    [price] => 24.95
                    
    )
     
                [
    1] => Array
                    
    (
                        
    [title] => Life of Pi
                        
    [author] => Yann Martel
                        
    [price] => 7.99
                    
    )
     
                [
    2] => Array
                    
    (
                        
    [title] => Europe on a Shoestring
                        
    [author] => Lonely Planet
                        
    [price] => 16.99
                    
    )
            )
    )


    Now, in order to access the title of the third book (for example), you would use the notation


    $data['book'][2]['title'];

    which would return

    Europe on a Shoestring

    Note that XML_Unserializer uses the type hints generated in the serialization process to accurately map XML elements to PHP data types. If these hints are unavailable (as in the example above), XML_Unserializer will "guess" the type of each value. A look at the source code of the class reveals that "complex structures will be arrays and tags with only CData in them will be strings."

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