How to get the list of all row from xml file with PHP

Question

I have a xml file and I want to parse the author list in this XML file.

            <AuthorList CompleteYN="Y">
            <Author ValidYN="Y">
                <LastName>Goyette-Desjardins</LastName>
                <ForeName>Guillaume</ForeName>
                <Initials>G</Initials>
                <AffiliationInfo>
                    <Affiliation>University 1.</Affiliation>
                </AffiliationInfo>
            </Author>
            <Author ValidYN="Y">
                <LastName>Auger</LastName>
                <ForeName>Jean-Philippe</ForeName>
                <Initials>JP</Initials>
                <AffiliationInfo>
                    <Affiliation>University 2</Affiliation>
                </AffiliationInfo>
            </Author>
            <Author ValidYN="Y">
                <LastName>Xu</LastName>
                <ForeName>Jianguo</ForeName>
                <Initials>J</Initials>
                <AffiliationInfo>
                    <Affiliation>University 3</Affiliation>
                </AffiliationInfo>
            </Author>
        </AuthorList>

I used this code the get the author names which have Lastname and Initial but I got only the last author with my code (Xu J).

$api_xml_url = "https://example.com&pid=3123133213&retmode=xml";                            
$xml = file_get_contents($api_xml_url); 
        preg_match_all("'<LastName>(.*?)</LastName>'si", $xml, $match);
        foreach($match[1] as $LastName) {
        $LastName = strip_tags($LastName);
        }
        preg_match_all("'<Initials>(.*?)</Initials>'si", $xml, $match);
        foreach($match[1] as $Initials) {
        $Initials = strip_tags($Initials);
        }
        $authors = $LastName.$Initials;

How to get the full author list (Goyette-Desjardins G; Auger JP; Xu J). Thank you very much

No, to parse an xml file you don't have to use regex or any direct string approach. Use XMLReader or DOMDocument. The file is already structured, use the structure. — Casimir et Hippolyte, Mar 25 '18 at 03:12

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 25 '18 at 03:18

1

You should not use regex to parse XML, instead, use something like simplexml_load_string().

<?php
$api_xml_url = "https://example.com&pid=3123133213&retmode=xml";                            
$string = file_get_contents($api_xml_url);

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);

foreach ($xml as $item) {
    echo $item->ForeName.' '.$item->LastName.' ('.$item->Initials.')'.PHP_EOL;
}

https://3v4l.org/FeTsa

Result:

Guillaume Goyette-Desjardins (G)
Jean-Philippe Auger (JP)
Jianguo Xu (J)

answered Mar 25 '18 at 03:18

Lawrence Cherone

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1

Note that you can use the `simplexml_load_file` function instead of `file_get_contents`. – Casimir et Hippolyte Mar 25 '18 at 03:38
Thank @Lawrence, but I want to get the list out side `foreach`, what can I do? Thanks – Nguyen Hoang Bach Mar 25 '18 at 03:40
Do you mean you want an array of `$authors`? – Lawrence Cherone Mar 25 '18 at 03:41
@NguyenHoangBach; store each item into an array. What's the problem? – Casimir et Hippolyte Mar 25 '18 at 03:42
Thanks all guy, code is more complicated than treat patient. (^^) – Nguyen Hoang Bach Mar 25 '18 at 04:03

How to get the list of all row from xml file with PHP

1 Answers1