Adding child node in xml file

Question

I have an xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xml>
<settings>
<title>Calendar2</title>
<subTitle>Calendar2</subTitle>
</settings>
<events date="02-09-2010">
<event>
<title>HTML Tags</title>
<description>HTML Tags</description>
</event>
</events>
</xml>

How i can add another event inside events tag with respect to date

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <xml>
    <settings>
    <title>Calendar2</title>
    <subTitle>Calendar2</subTitle>
    </settings>
    <events date="02-09-2010">
    <event>
    <title>HTML Tags</title>
    <description>HTML Tags</description>
    </event>
    <event>
    <title>Another Title</title>
    <description>Another description</description>
    </event>
    </events>
    </xml>

i used this code

$xml_str = file_get_contents($xmlfile);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml_str);
$event = $xml->events->addChild('event');
$event->addChild('title', 'More Parser Stories');
$event->addChild('description', 'This is all about the people who make it work.');
file_put_contents($xmlfile, $xml->asXML());

But it will add to the first node.How i can add to events tag with date 02-09-2010

Answer 1

You'll need to use DOM instead, specifically DOMNode::insertBefore:

http://us.php.net/manual/en/domnode.insertbefore.php

Answer 2

You'll have to query for the wanted <events> tag instead of taking the first one (which what $xml->events would simply return), using xpath to query the xml document is helpful here:

PHP Script:

<?php
$xml_str = file_get_contents('xmlfile');
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml_str);
$wantedEventsTag = $xml->xpath('/xml/events[@date="02-09-2010"]');
$wantedEventsTag = $wantedEventsTag [0];//since above fun will return an array
$wantedEventsTag['attrname']='attrval';//Here's how to add an attribute
$event = $wantedEventsTag->addChild('event');
$event->addChild('title', 'More Parser Stories');
$event->addChild('description', 'This is all about the people who make it work.');
file_put_contents('xmlfile.xml', $xml->asXML());

Sample XML File with multiple <events> tags:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xml>
  <settings>
    <title>Calendar2</title>
    <subTitle>Calendar2</subTitle>
  </settings>
  <events date="01-01-1999">
  </events>
  <events>
  </events>
  <events date="02-09-2010">
    <event>
      <title>HTML Tags</title>
      <description>HTML Tags</description>
    </event>
    <event>
      <title>Another Title</title>
      <description>Another description</description>
    </event>
  </events>
</xml>

the script xpath will match the required node, which we later use and add events subnodes to.