Question

I created an ios app that parses an xml document. If a user logs in, their information will be added to the xml file. I would like to be able to remove a user if they are logging out or cancelling their logins. Essentially, I need to figure out how to delete an xml object (a user, in this case) that looks like this:

<users>
    <user>
        <fname>fname1</fname>
        <lname>lname1</lname>
    </user>
    <user>
        <fname>fname2</fname>
        <lname>lname2</lname>
    </user>
</users>

For example, I may want to remove a user based on the last name, which will always be unique in my case… This is the php that I have so far, but I am completely open to suggestions on doing it a different way

$deletefname = $row['fname'];
$deletelname = $row['lname'];
$deleteimageurl = $row['imageURL'];

$xmlUrl = "thefile.xml"; // XML 
$xmlStr = file_get_contents($xmlUrl);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlStr);
foreach($xml->users as $user)
{
    if($user[$fname] == $deletefname) {
        $xml=dom_import_simplexml($user);
        $xml->parentNode->removeChild($xml);    
    }
}


$xml->asXML('newfile.xml');
echo $xml;

I am very bad with php, and I took this code from someone else. Not 100% sure how it works.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

<?php 
/*
 * @source_file -- source to your xml document
 * @node_to_remove -- your node
 * Note this will remove an entire user from the source file if the argument (node_to_remove)
   matches a nodes node value
 *
 */
function newFunction($source_file,$node_to_remove) {
    $xml = new DOMDocument();
    $xml->load($source_file);
    $xml->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
    $xml->formatOutput = true; 
    foreach ($xml->getElementsByTagName('users') as $users ) 
    {
        foreach($users->getElementsByTagName('user') as $user) {

            $first_name = $user->getElementsByTagName('fname')->item(0);

            if($first_name->nodeValue == $node_to_remove) {


                $users->removeChild($users->getElementsByTagName('user')->item(0));

            }

        }

    }

    $result = $xml->saveXML();

    return $result;

}


echo newFunction('xml.xml','lname1');
?>