search a xml file with php

Hi,

I have a very large file in xml (90mb) and altho I am not quite familiar with xml I now have a parser that can read the file....or at least a bit because I took a sample of 225kb and the parser works.

Now I have a problem
the xml file is about houses and I only want to parse houses in my area. So I am looking for a way to do a search within the parser. What I have now is this

<?php
// the xml file we want to parse
$xmlSource="houses1.xml";

$country="";
$area="";
$city="";
$description_1_nl="";
$description_2_nl="";
$description_3_nl="";
$house_id="";


$currentElement="";	//holds the name of the current element

$shows=array(); 	//array to hold all the house data

/*	The start Element Handler	
*	This is where we store the element name, currently being parsed, in $currentElement.
*	This is also where we get the attribute, if any.
*/
function startElement($parser,$name,$attr){
		
	$GLOBALS['currentElement']=$name;	
	
	/*	if the element is house, we want the value of the houseid attribute*/
	if(strcmp($name,"house")==0){
		$GLOBALS['house_id']=$attr["houseid"];
	}
}//end startElement()


/*	
*	The end Element Handler
*/

function endElement($parser,$name){
	$elements=array('country','area','city','description_1_nl','description_2_nl','description_3_nl','house_id');     


      /*If the element being parsed is a description it means that the

*parser has completed parsing description. We can then store

* the data in our array $shows[ ]

      */

      if(strcmp($name,"descriptions")==0){
			foreach($elements as $element){
				$temp[$element]=$GLOBALS[$element];							
			}
				$GLOBALS['shows'][]=$temp;
           


           /*After storing the data we reset our global description-variables to
           hold a new description*/

            $GLOBALS['description_1_nl']="";

            $GLOBALS['description_2_nl']="";

            $GLOBALS['description_3_nl']="";

      }

      /*After parsing a house we reset the rest of the globals.*/

      if(strcmp($name,"house")==0){

            $GLOBALS['house_id']="";

            $GLOBALS['area']="";

            $GLOBALS['country']="";

            $GLOBALS['city']="";

      }

}//end endElement()


/*	The character data Handler
*	Depending on what the currentElement is, 
*	the handler assigns the value to the appropriate variable
*/

function characterData($parser, $data) {
        $elements = array (
             'country','area','city','description_1_nl','description_2_nl','description_3_nl'
        );

        foreach ($elements as $element) {
            if ($GLOBALS["currentElement"] == $element) {
                $GLOBALS[$element] .= $data;
            }
        }
    }

/*	This is where the actual parsing is going on.
*	parseFile() parses the xml document and return an array
*	with the data we asked for.
*/

function parseFile(){
	global $xmlSource,$shows;
	
	/*Creating the xml parser*/
	$xml_parser=xml_parser_create();
	
	/*Register the handlers*/
	xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser,"startElement","endElement");
	xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser,"characterData");
	
	/*Disables case-folding. Needed for this example*/
	xml_parser_set_option($xml_parser,XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING,false);
	
	/*Open the xml file and feed it to the parser in 4k blocks*/
   if(!($fp=fopen($xmlSource,"r"))){
      die("Cannot open  $xmlSource  ");
   }
   while(($data=fread($fp,4096))){

      if(!xml_parse($xml_parser,$data,feof($fp))){
	     die(sprintf("XML error at line %d column %d ", 
                      xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser), 
                      xml_get_current_column_number($xml_parser)));
	  }
   }
     
	 /*Finish ! we free the parser and returns the array*/
	 xml_parser_free($xml_parser);
	 
	 return $shows;
	
}//end parseFile()

PHP:

If I search for xml php parse search in google I don't get any results I can work with so any help is welcome.

Alternativly I am thinking of dumping the data from xml into a mysql database because I do know how to handle it if it's in mysql

Edwin

 

Thats probably what I would do as well.

 

You might check out the XSL side of the equation. Perform a search with "XSL filter" (without the quotes) to see how others have used the stylesheet to apply filters to the data. Good luck!