Question

I am absolute beginner in PHP. Sorry for a very basic API question. I am stuck while coding at a point where I need to call a URL which will return me an XML or a JSON. Now I have to capture that in a variable.

For an example, I have written the following code:

class Search {
   private $documents = array();
   public function __construct() {
      $xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
      $xmlDoc->load("solr.xml");
      .....

Now I am directly loading an XML. I dont want to do that, instead:

Step1: I want to call a http url which returns me an XML or JSON.
Step2: I need to store that in some variable like xmlDoc above
Step3: and later ofcourse I want to parse it.

I have no issues with step 3 but I just need some pointers or help as to how can I accomplish step 1 and 2?

Answer 1

load should accept a URL as a parameter.

$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load('http://example.com/path/to/file.xml');

Or, you can use file_get_contents to download a URL to a string.

$xml = file_get_contents('http://example.com/path/to/file.xml');
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->loadXML($xml);

Or for JSON:

$json = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://example.com/path/to/file.json'));