Storing XML data in MySQL database

Okay, I want to extract information from an XML feed hosted elsewhere, using PHP, and then add the information to a MySQL database. I'd be running the script automatically once per day I think, adding any new entries and updating one field in every existing entry. Although this last may work better being run as a separate script. Problem is, I know nothing whatsoever about XML so I don't know where to start.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

 

One possible method, is regular expressions.

 

You can easily write a script to parse it using simplexml. You can load the xml into an object / array, and then loop through and add to your database as needed. Put this in a cron script or create a manual upload or something similar to run it every week.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.simplexml-load-string.php

Use var_dump or print_r to debug the specific xml.

 

Yup, SimpleXML or XMLReader if you're working with large files. Depending on your schema structure, you might consider just using a simple key,value,row id, file id for each value you insert into the MySQL db.

 

Yes, XMLReader seems to be doing the trick. The file has over 1,300 entries, so I thought this way would be best.