Question

Hoping for some assistance here. I have a large xml file (called xml-file.xml in the code above). The problem I am having with the code above is that it is very slow to write everything to the database. I think the reason it is slow is because of the section that loops through the movies and writes only the movie name in a comma separated string to the table. My question – is there a more efficient way to convert the movie names to a comma separated string and then write to the table? Thanks in advance for any help!

The XML Markup:

    <users>
      <user>
        <id>7280462</id>
        <name>John</name>
        <movies>
          <name>
            <![CDATA[Jack]]>
          </name>
          <description>
            <![CDATA[comedy]]>
          </description>
          <name>
            <![CDATA[Superman]]>
          </name>
          <description>
            <![CDATA[action]]>
          </description>
          <name>
            <![CDATA[Ace Venture]]>
          </name>
          <description>
            <![CDATA[comedy]]>
          </description>
          <name>
            <![CDATA[Major League]]>
          </name>
          <description>
            <![CDATA[sports]]>
          </description>
        </movies>
      </user>
    </users>

My PHP code:

    $file = 'xml-file.xml';
    $users = simplexml_load_file($file);

    $num_rows = count($users);
    for ($j=0; $j < $num_rows; $j++) { 
        $userid = $users->user[$j]->id;
        $name = $users->user[$j]->name;

        //update table with userid and name
        $db->exec("INSERT INTO table (userid, name) VALUES ('$userid', '$name')");

            //loop through movies and write only movie name to table as comma separated string
            foreach ($users->user$j]->movies as $element) {
              foreach($element as $key => $val) {
                  if ($key != 'description') {
                       //echo "{$key}: {$val}";
                       $title = trim($val).',';
                      $db->exec("UPDATE table set movies = concat(movies,'','$title') where userid = '$userid'");
                    }
              }
            }

    }

Answer 1

How about this:

for ($j=0; $j < $num_rows; $j++) { 
    $userid = $users->user[$j]->id;
    $name = $users->user[$j]->name;
    $titles = "";

    foreach ($users->user$j]->movies as $element) {
        foreach($element as $key => $val) {
            if ($key != 'description') {
                   $titles .= trim($val).',';
            }
        }
    }

    $titles = trim($titles, ",");

    $db->exec("INSERT INTO table (userid, name, movies) VALUES ('$userid', '$name','$titles')");

 }

It’s generating all the SQL in one go, so you just need a single statement.