Simple XML Load File not working

Question

Hi, how come this isn't working:

$url = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20xpath%3D%22%2F%2Fmeta%22%20and%20url%3D%22http://www.cnn.com%22&format=xml&diagnostics=false";

$xml = (simplexml_load_file($url))

I get multiple errors telling me the HTTP request failed. Ultimately I want to get the results from this file into an array eg

Description = CNN.com delivers the latest breaking news etc.

Keywords = CNN, CNN news, CNN.com, CNN TV etc.

But this initial stage isn't working. Any help please?

EDIT Additional information:

Errors:

warning: simplexml_load_file(http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20xpath%3D%22//meta%22%20and%20url%3D%22http://www.cnn.com%22&format=xml&diagnostics=false) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed!
# warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20xpath%3D%22//meta%22%20and%20url%3D%22http://www.cnn.com%22&format=xml&diagnostics=false" 

• From my phpinfo(): allow_url_fopen On On
• PHP version 5.2.11
• Think it's valid (http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20xpath%3D%22//meta%22%20and%20url%3D%22http://www.cnn.com%22&format=xml&diagnostics=false)

Answer 1

1. could you please post the exact errors?
2. is url_fopen allowed on your server?
3. what version of php do you use?
4. is the requested file a valid xml-file?

Answer 2

Well, the XML is GETable. As for valid, it lacks <?xml version="1.0"?>, yet I think it's not required.

<query xmlns:yahoo="http://www.yahooapis.com/v1/base.rng" yahoo:count="5" yahoo:created="2010-03-09T05:09:03Z" yahoo:lang="en-US" yahoo:updated="2010-03-09T05:09:03Z" yahoo:uri="http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/yql?q=select+*+from+html+where+xpath%3D%22%2F%2Fmeta%22+and+url%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%22"&gt;&lt;results&gt;&lt;meta content="HTML Tidy for Java (vers. 26 Sep 2004), see www.w3.org" name="generator"/><meta content="1800;url=?refresh=1" http-equiv="refresh"/><meta content="CNN.com delivers the latest breaking news and information on the latest top stories, weather, business, entertainment, politics, and more. For in-depth coverage, CNN.com provides special reports, video, audio, photo galleries, and interactive guides." name="Description"/><meta content="CNN, CNN news, CNN.com, CNN TV, news, news online, breaking news, U.S. news, world news, weather, business, CNN Money, sports, politics, law, technology, entertainment, education, travel, health, special reports, autos, developing story, news video, CNN Intl" name="Keywords"/><meta content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type"/></results></query><!-- total: 250 --> 

Tested it on my local server (PHP 5.3), no errors reported. I've used your source code and it works. Here's a print_r():

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [results] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [meta] => Array
                (
                    [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [@attributes] => Array
                                (
                                    [content] => HTML Tidy for Java (vers. 26 Sep 2004), see www.w3.org
                                    [name] => generator
                                )

                        )

                    [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [@attributes] => Array
                                (
                                    [content] => 1800;url=?refresh=1
                                    [http-equiv] => refresh
                                )

                        )

                    [2] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [@attributes] => Array
                                (
                                    [content] => CNN.com delivers the latest breaking news and information on the latest top stories, weather, business, entertainment, politics, and more. For in-depth coverage, CNN.com provides special reports, video, audio, photo galleries, and interactive guides.
                                    [name] => Description
                                )

                        )

                    [3] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [@attributes] => Array
                                (
                                    [content] => CNN, CNN news, CNN.com, CNN TV, news, news online, breaking news, U.S. news, world news, weather, business, CNN Money, sports, politics, law, technology, entertainment, education, travel, health, special reports, autos, developing story, news video, CNN Intl
                                    [name] => Keywords
                                )

                        )

                    [4] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [@attributes] => Array
                                (
                                    [content] => text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
                                    [http-equiv] => content-type
                                )

                        )

                )

        )

)

I'd suggest you to encode the URL, but that's already done. You could try performing the query with cURL.

Answer 3

i tested this on my local xampp-installation and i can't reproduce your error messages. my script:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20html%20where%20xpath%3D%22//meta%22%20and%20url%3D%22http://www.cnn.com%22&amp;format=xml&amp;diagnostics=false");
var_dump($xml);
?>

could you please try to open the requested page in your browser, save it as test.xml, upload it to your server and try a simplexml_load_file("test.xml");? do you get the same errors when you try this?

Answer 4

so, here are 2 more ideas

1. user_agent

maybe the external script blocks script-calls (or: tries to block this). please write this line in the head of your file (before the first output):

ini_set('user_agent', "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5");

and test it again.

2. very dumb workaround

if nothing helps, use copy($url,"/temp.xml"); or wget to download the site in your script and open this (and: open the downloaded file with your browser, maybe you'll see a 403-forbidden or something which would confirm my first thought)

Answer 5

(Note: Potentially useless answer once a real answer has been found…)

---

While you're figuring out the XML problem (keep working on it!) know that you can also get the YQL response back as JSON. Here's a quickie example:

$url = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select+%2A+"
     . "from+html+where+xpath%3D%22%2F%2Fmeta%5B%40name%3D%27"
     . "Keywords%27+or+%40name%3D%27Description%27%5D%22+and+"
     . "url%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%22&format=json&diagnostics=false";

// Grab YQL response and parse JSON
$json   = file_get_contents($url);
$result = json_decode($json, TRUE);

// Loop over meta results looking for what we want
$items = $result['query']['results']['meta'];
$metas = array();
foreach ($items as $item) {
    $metas[$item['name']] = $item['content'];
}
print_r($metas);

Giving an array like (text truncated for the screen):

Array
(
    [Description] => CNN.com delivers the latest breaking news and …
    [Keywords] => CNN, CNN news, CNN.com, CNN TV, news, news online …
)

Note that the YQL query (try it in the console) is slightly different to yours, to make the PHP simpler.