trying to parse an xml from a url and it wont work.

Question

this page shown an xml file and im trying to use simplexml to parse the data out and print it. what am i missing? cause all it does is show a blank page when i run it.

<?php
$url = "http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.getList&amp;api_key=somestring";

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($url,NULL,true);

foreach($xml -> result as $value) {


    echo $value->doc_id."<br/>";
    echo $value->access_key."<br/>";
    echo $value->secret_password."<br/>";
    echo $value->title."<br/>";



}

?>

Answer 1

(Not quite an answer, but...) Add some boilerplate text before, after and inside the foreach loop to see which bits are executing, and how often the loop runs.

Answer 2

<result> is not a child of <rsp> but of <resultset>

foreach($xml->resultset->result as $value) {

Answer 3

You should always name your PHP variables after the node they represent. In your case, the root node is <rsp/> therefore the variable that holds the root node should be $rsp. This way, you can easily recognize that there's an error in the way you're trying to access the <result/> nodes:

$rsp = simplexml_load_file($url);

foreach ($rsp->resultset->result as $result)
{
    echo $result->doc_id, "<br/>\n";
}

There, no ambiguity anymore.

<rsp>
    <resultset>
        <result />
    </resultset>
</rsp>

PHP:
$rsp->resultset->result

XPath:
/rsp/resultset/result

And no wondering later on what $value refers to.