I am doing a small website project. In a page their is a section where the client posts new updates, at any given time there will be a maximum of 5 to 6 posts in this division. I was trying to create a MySQL database for the content. But I wonder if their is anyway I could have all the entries as XML files and use PHP to parse it. Is it possible ?
Which one is the better option MySQL or XML?
XML is a horrid piece of crap in my opinion. It’s bloated and rather unpleasant to work with. However, it is a viable option as long as your number of entries and the amount of traffic stays small.
You can use SimpleXML to parse the XML, but the performance is going to degrade as file size increases. MySQL, however, will handle quite a lot of data before performance becomes a concern provided the schema is properly setup.
If you do use XML, you could always use a half-way XML solution. Like parse the file once, then store a serialized array of it.
Though really, if you’re going to store it in a file of some sort, I would suggest, in order: SQLite, serialized array, JSON, XML. (Depending on your situation that order may change.)
If you abstract away the low level details enough, you should be able to make adapters that can be used interchangeably, thus allowing you to easily switch out storage backends. (On a large project, that would likely be unfeasible, but it sounds like your data storage/retrieval will remain fairly simple.)