How to parse an xml

[prasath nadarajah]

What is the best way to parse and xml file returned from an http request?

Should i use php simplexml element?

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Cheers

Prasath Nadarajah

[David Swain]

When parsing install manifests (just an xml file), the installation script ( libraries/joomla/installer/installer.php ) does:

J 1.5:
JFactory::getXMLParser('Simple')
the 1.5 one invokes a "JSimpleXML" which appears to be a re-creation of simplexml which didn't exist in php 4.* (which J1.5 supports).

J 2.5:
$xml = JFactory::getXML($file)
This in turn creates a simplexml object for all the caller's xml needs

I'd suggest using the same methods as the Joomla core. Failing that just going to simplexml seems reasonable.

:-Dave

[Amy Stephen]

For what it's worth, I just use PHP's SimpleXML

[Louis Landry]

There are several techniques to parsing XML regardless of where it comes from.  While SimpleXML is nice, it (like DOM parsing) can be quite memory intensive if you are processing large XML files.  I've found that if I'm handling XML files that are very large (or have the potential to be very large) that a great tradeoff is to use XMLReader to stream through bite sized sections of the XML and convert those sections to SimpleXML elements for easy handling.  Ultimately your mileage will vary depending on use case, but the tools available in PHP natively are really good.

- Louis