Get content from XML PHP5

Question

Hi, I´m working on a paymentsolution and need some help with the PHP. I´m doing a HTTPRequest and in response I will get some XML. The XML Could look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<payer>
    <purchase_list>
            <freeform_purchase>
                <line_number>1</line_number>
                <description>description</description>
                <price_including_vat>12</price_including_vat>
                <vat_percentage>
                    15
                </vat_percentage>
                <quantity>10</quantity>
            </freeform_purchase>
    </purchase_list>
    <payment_urls>
        <auth_url>authurl</auth_url>
        <settle_url>settleurl</settle_url>
    </payment_urls>
</payer>

Basically what I want to do is to get the content from the tags and save them in strings.

I tried this:

$order = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<payer>
    <purchase_list>
            <freeform_purchase>
                <line_number>1</line_number>
                <description>description</description>
                <price_including_vat>12</price_including_vat>
                <vat_percentage>
                    15
                </vat_percentage>
                <quantity>10</quantity>
            </freeform_purchase>
    </purchase_list>
    <payment_urls>
        <auth_url>authurl</auth_url>
        <settle_url>settleurl</settle_url>
    </payment_urls>
</payer>';

$orderXML = new DOMDocument();
$orderXML->load($order);

$payerXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'payer' );
$purchase_listXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'purchase_list' );
$freeform_purchaseXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'freeform_purchase' );
$linenumberXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'line_number' );
$descriptionXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'description' );
$price_inc_vatXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'price_including_vat' );
$vat_percentageXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'vat_percentage' );
$quantityXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'quantity' );
$settle_urlXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'settle_url' );
$auth_urlXML = $orderXML->getElementsByTagName( 'auth_url' );

$theLineNumber = $linenumberXML->item(0)->nodeValue;
$theValue = $descriptionXML->item(0)->nodeValue;
$freeform_price = $price_inc_vatXML->item(0)->nodeValue;
$freeform_vat = $vat_percentageXML->item(0)->nodeValue;
$freeform_quantity = $quantityXML->item(0)->nodeValue;

$Settle_url = $settle_urlXML->item(0)->nodeValue;
$Auth_url = $auth_urlXML->item(0)->nodeValue;

echo 'thLineNumber - ' . $theLineNumber;
echo $theValue;
echo $freeform_price;
echo $freeform_vat;
echo $freeform_quantity;
echo $Settle_url;
echo $Auth_url;

But obviously there is something wrong since it won´t echo anything.. Suggestions?

Answer 1

You might look at SimpleXML - it's much, much more straightforward to use then DOMDocument. It'll give you the XML data back in a parsed object form, so that you can do things like this:

$order = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<payer>
    <purchase_list>
            <freeform_purchase>
                <line_number>1</line_number>
                <description>description</description>
                <price_including_vat>12</price_including_vat>
                <vat_percentage>
                    15
                </vat_percentage>
                <quantity>10</quantity>
            </freeform_purchase>
    </purchase_list>
    <payment_urls>
        <auth_url>authurl</auth_url>
        <settle_url>settleurl</settle_url>
    </payment_urls>
</payer>';

// Alternative version: $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($order);
// (completely equivalent to the below line)
$xml = simplexml_load_string($order);

$vat_pct = intval($xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->vat_percentage);

Answer 2

Try using SimpleXML:

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($order);

echo $xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->line_number . "\n";
echo $xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->description . "\n";
echo $xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->price_including_vat . "\n";
echo $xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->vat_percentage . "\n";
echo $xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->quantity . "\n";

echo $xml->payment_urls->auth_url . "\n";
echo $xml->payment_urls->settle_url . "\n";

Answer 3

If you are only trying to read some data from an XML string, the simplest way would probably be to use SimpleXML, and not DOM -- DOM is well suited when it comes to writing XML, but for reading, SimpleXML is much easy to work with.

For instance, you could use something like this as a starting point :
Note I used the simplexml_load_string function to load the XML string.

$string = <<<STR
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<payer>
    <purchase_list>
            <freeform_purchase>
                <line_number>1</line_number>
                <description>description</description>
                <price_including_vat>12</price_including_vat>
                <vat_percentage>
                    15
                </vat_percentage>
                <quantity>10</quantity>
            </freeform_purchase>
    </purchase_list>
    <payment_urls>
        <auth_url>authurl</auth_url>
        <settle_url>settleurl</settle_url>
    </payment_urls>
</payer>
STR;

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);

echo intval($xml->purchase_list->freeform_purchase->price_including_vat) . '<br />';
echo (string)$xml->payment_urls->auth_url . '<br />';

Which would give you the following output :

12
authurl

Basically, with SimpleXML, the XML tree is available as an object -- the root node of the XML not being present in the tree, as it's the root ; which is why I didn't have to include payer to access the data.

Answer 4

Try using simplexml_load_string($string); then just do a foreach with it like this

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);

foreach($xml as $item)
{
echo $item->description; // would print the description
// continiu your logic here
}

Answer 5

Don't use DOM for that kind of things, use SimpleXML instead.

$payer = simplexml_load_string($order);
$freeform_purchase = $payer->purchase_list->freeform_purchase;

echo "Line number: ", $freeform_purchase->line_number, "\n";
echo "Description: ", $freeform_purchase->description, "\n";
echo "Auth URL: ", $payer->payment_urls->auth_url, "\n";
echo "Settle URL: ", $payer->payment_urls->settle_url, "\n";

// if you use the values as strings, cast them as strings
$description = (string) $freeform_purchase->description;

// if you have to use the values for math, cast them as integers
$vat_percentage = (int) $freeform_purchase->vat_percentage;

Answer 6

Here be a solution with DOM

First suggestion: set error_reporting(-1) to see any potential errors. If you do this you will see PHP raise several Notices about

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object

for the ->item(0) calls to the DOMNodeList elements. The rather simple solution is to use

$orderXML->loadXml($order);

instead of load(), because load loads an XML document from a file.

Answer 7

Ok got it solved! Thanks a lot for the help!