Question

All of the examples I can find online about this involve simply adding content to an XML file at the document root, but I really need to do it deeper than that.

My XML file is simple, I have:

<?xml v1 etc> <channel> <screenshots> <item>   <title>Image Title</title>   <link>www.link.com/image.jpg</link> </item> </screenshots> </channel> 

All I want to be able to do is add new ‘item’ elements, each with a title and link. I know I need to be using PHP DOM, but I’m stumped as to how to code it so that it adds data within ‘screenshots’ rather than overwriting the whole document. I have a suspicion I may need to use XPath too, but I have no idea how!

The code I have pieced together from online examples looks like this (but I’m certain it’s wrong)

$newshottitle = 'My new screenshot'; $newshotlink = 'http://www.image.com/image.jpg';  $dom = newDomDocument; $dom->formatOutput = true; $dom->load('../xml/screenshots.xml');  $dom->getElementsByTagName('screenshots'); $t = $dom->createElement('item'); $t = $dom->createElement('title'); $t->appendChild($dom->createTextNode('$newshottitle'));  $l = $dom->createElement('link'); $l->appendChild($dom->createTextNode('$newshotlink'));  $dom->save('../xml/screenshots.xml'); 

Answer 1

adding content to an XML file at the document root, but I really need to do it deeper than that.

You’re not adding content anywhere at the moment! You create <title> and <link> element nodes with text in, then you do nothing with them. You should be passing them into ‘appendChild’ on the <item> element node (which also you are currently creating and immediately throwing away by not assigning it to a variable).

Here’s a starting-point:

$screenshots= $dom->getElementsByTagName('screenshots')[0];  $title= $dom->createElement('title'); $title->appendChild($dom->createTextNode($newshottitle)); $item= $dom->createElement('item'); $item->appendChild($title); $screenshots->appendChild($item);