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Last updated: Fri, 26 Jan 2007

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# xml_parser_create

(PHP 3 >= 3.0.6, PHP 4, PHP 5)

xml_parser_create -- Create an XML parser

## Description

resource xml_parser_create ( [string encoding] )

xml_parser_create() creates a new XML parser and returns a resource handle referencing it to be used by the other XML functions.

The optional `encoding` specifies the character encoding for the input/output in PHP 4. Starting from PHP 5, the input encoding is automatically detected, so that the `encoding` parameter specifies only the output encoding. In PHP 4, the default output encoding is the same as the input charset. If empty string is passed, the parser attempts to identify which encoding the document is encoded in by looking at the heading 3 or 4 bytes. In PHP 5.0.0 and 5.0.1, the default output charset is ISO-8859-1, while in PHP 5.0.2 and upper is UTF-8. The supported encodings are `ISO-8859-1`, `UTF-8` and `US-ASCII`.

See also xml_parser_create_ns() and xml_parser_free().

add a note User Contributed Notes
xml_parser_create
19-Apr-2006 07:42
`I'd also recommend adding the option below
xml_parser_set_option($parser,XML_OPTION_SKIP_WHITE,1);`
Kim
22-Feb-2006 02:20
`Actually, the XML parser DOES support more encodings.
The trick is to call $parser = xml_parser_create("");
I learned this trick from
http://tinyurl.com/2cmya (http://minutillo.com/steve/weblog/)`
Tobbe
25-May-2005 06:01
`The above "XML to array" code does not work properly if you have several tags on the same level and with the same name, example:
<currenterrors>
<error>
<description>This is a real error...</description>
</error>
<error>
<description>This is a second error...</description>
</error>
<error>
<description>Lots of errors today...</description>
</error>
<error>
<description>This is the last error...</description>
</error>
</currenterrors>
It will then only display the first <error>-tag.
In this case you will need to number the tags automatically or maybe have several arrays for each new element.`
dma05 at web dot de
27-Apr-2005 02:54
`xml_parser_create () on php5 sometimes detects the wrong input format for me -- for example, sometimes when i try to parse data that has been fetched from a databse by my script and that only contains a handful of special ISO-8859-1 characters, it seems to think the input was something else and xml_parse() chokes on things like umlauts.
the only reason i was able to figure out so far would be that -- unlike my data files -- the xml data generated by my script doesn't contain the <?xml [...] encoding="..." ?> definition. every data source with that definition seemed just fine; it's kinda odd that it worked *sometimes* without it *shrugs*.
no matter what the reason, using utf8_encode () on the string made it work, and prepending '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>' worked as well.
this problem shouldn't occur in php4, since there you would specify the input encoding along with the output encoding.`
php at stock-consulting dot com
21-Feb-2005 02:47
`Even though I passed "UTF-8" as encoding type PHP (Version 4.3.3) did *not* treat the input file as UTF-8. The input file was missing the BOM header bytes (which may indeed be omitted, according to RFC3629...but things are a bit unclear there. The RFC seems to make mere recommendations concering the BOM header). If you want to sure that PHP treats an UTF-8 encoded file correctly, make sure that it begins with the corresponding 3 byte BOM header (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF)`
jcalvert at gmx dot net
03-Apr-2004 10:39
`To maintain compatibility between PHP4 and PHP5 you should always pass a string argument to this function. PHP4 autodetects the format of the input if you leave it out whereas PHP5 will assume the format to be ISO-8859-1 (and choke on the byte order marker of UTF-8 files).
Calling the function as <?php $res = xml_parser_create('') ?> will cause both versions of PHP to autodetect the format.`
annettetruong at yahoo dot com
26-Mar-2004 10:21
`Good article explaining how to use PHP to parse an XML RSS feed:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0/2`
mmustafa at vsnl dot com
05-Jan-2004 10:00
`thought I'd share this small piece of PHP code that prepares a proper array from XML Data
(uses xml_parse_into_struct to get a raw array)
features : 1) can easily adjust to multiple levels 2) simple.
<code>
$file = "data.xml";
$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
if (!($fp = fopen($file, "r"))) {
die("could not open XML input");
}
$data = fread($fp, filesize($file));
fclose($fp);
xml_parse_into_struct($xml_parser, $data, $vals, $index);
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);
$params = array();
$level = array();
foreach ($vals as $xml_elem) {
if ($xml_elem['type'] == 'open') {
if (array_key_exists('attributes',$xml_elem)) {
list($level[$xml_elem['level']],$extra) = array_values($xml_elem['attributes']);
} else {
$level[$xml_elem['level']] = $xml_elem['tag'];
}
}
if ($xml_elem['type'] == 'complete') {
$start_level = 1;
$php_stmt = '$params';
while($start_level < $xml_elem['level']) {
$php_stmt .= '[$level['.$start_level.']]';
$start_level++;
}
$php_stmt .= '[$xml_elem[\'tag\']] = $xml_elem[\'value\'];';
eval($php_stmt);
}
}
echo "<pre>";
print_r ($params);
echo "</pre>";
</code>
Example :
I/P XML ...
<country id="ZZ">
<name>My Land</name>
<location>15E</location>
<area>40000</area>
<state1>
<name>Hi State</name>
<area>1000</area>
<population>2000</population>
<city1>
<location>13E</location>
<population>500</population>
<area>500</area>
</city1>
<city2>
<location>13E</location>
<population>500</population>
<area>5000</area>
</city2>
</state1>
<state2>
<name>Low State</name>
<area>3000</area>
<population>20000</population>
<city1>
<location>15E</location>
<population>5000</population>
<area>1500</area>
</city1>
</state2>
</country>
O/P Array :
Array
(
[ZZ] => Array
(
[NAME] => My Land
[LOCATION] => 15E
[AREA] => 40000
[STATE1] => Array
(
[NAME] => Hi State
[AREA] => 1000
[POPULATION] => 2000
[CITY1] => Array
(
[LOCATION] => 13E
[POPULATION] => 500
[AREA] => 500
)
[CITY2] => Array
(
[LOCATION] => 13E
[POPULATION] => 500
[AREA] => 5000
)
)
[STATE2] => Array
(
[NAME] => Low State
[AREA] => 3000
[POPULATION] => 20000
[CITY1] => Array
(
[LOCATION] => 15E
[POPULATION] => 5000
[AREA] => 1500
)
)
)
)`
add a note
xml_parser_free xml_parser_create_ns

Last updated: Fri, 26 Jan 2007
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