Can I use PHP to grab external XML file for use by JQuery?

Question

I am trying to load Google custom XML search results into a PHP page and then manipulate the XML using JQuery.

I understand that I can't use javascript to grab the XML file as it's on an external domain but can I use PHP to grab the XML from the server and then make it available to JQuery as an XML file, or other DOM structure, so I can then traverse that XML using, for example:

$(resultXml).find("R").each(function(){
    $("ul.results").append("<li>"+$(this).find("S")+"</li>");
});

where resultXml is the XML object.

The XML url is something like this:

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=XXXXXXX&client=google-xxxx&output=xml_no_dtd&q=$keyword

Where the $keyword is passed to the PHP page in the GET string.

I'm good with the front-end stuff but less so with server-side (which is why I'm not parsing the XML in PHP) and I'm puzzled how I would go about grabbing the XML in PHP and converting that into a form JQuery can parse (using json_encode perhaps?). I have read about several ways of including an external file in PHP using functions like fopen but there seem to be a lot of caveats about proxies and permissions.

Thanks.

Answer 1

This'll get you headed on the right track:

<?php
echo file_get_contents("http://www.google.com/cse?cx=XXXXXXX&amp;client=google-xxxx&amp;output=xml_no_dtd&amp;q=$keyword");

You can read more on jQuery and XML here.

Answer 2

in php you can get your data into a json formatted string using

<?php
   $json = json_encode(file_get_contents("http://www.google.com/cse?cx=XXXXXXX&amp;client=google-xxxx&amp;output=xml_no_dtd&amp;q=$keyword"));
?>

then assign it to a javascript variable

<script>var json = <?= $json; ?></script>

now use jQuery to do whatever you want with the json variable