PHP and file manipulation

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to open an xml file as a plain text file so I can read in each line and manipulate the text?

Answer 1

$xml_file = '/var/www/file.xml';
$contents = file_get_contents($xml_file); // Dumps the entire file into a single string
$contents = file($xml_file); // Dumps each line into an array

However, I would recommend using simplexml_load_file() (even though you said you wanted to avoid it) because there is no guarantee as to how the xml will be formatted. It could all be on a single line or formatted with line-breaks in unexpected places.

Answer 2

Why not use any of the XML parser/manipulator directly?

You can find those references at http://www.php.net/manual/en/refs.xml.php

If you have a nicely formatted XML file then,

$file = 'file.xml';

// get contents and normalize the newline
$xml_arr = file($file);
foreach($xml_arr as &$line){
  // do your manipulation to $line
}

$ctns = implode("\n",$xml_arr);
file_put_contents($file,$ctns); // write back

Answer 3

To read file as array of strings use file function:

$lines = file('your_xml_file.xml');
foreach($lines as $line) { 
    ## do the stuff for each line
}