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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T11:55:46+00:00

I have a company that provides a data feed for a search tool but

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I have a company that provides a data feed for a search tool but I must build the search tool. The products inventory changes hourly, which is why they have a feed for the product information. I can pull the feed in to populate a search form where customers can search on my site to see if a product is available by that vendor.

Can someone point me in the right direction to parse the XML feed and display the results as a dropdown in a form? Once they select the first item which is ‘Style’ then a new box should appear called ‘Color’ which again is returned from the feed in a second call (I think it would be a second call passing the parameter the form gathered in the first selection.

I’m not asking anyone to write this for me but I’m new to cURL (which I’m thinking I need to use) and SimpleXML and just need links to good relevant tutorial or some advice.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, it’s not very clear how you want things to happen so it’s difficult to give you advice to whether consuming the XML Feed server-side or client side.

    Besides, you haven’t explained how you can “obtain” the xml feed. Is it a webservice that requires authentication? What type of request is it? Or it’s simply a file residing in somewhere on the interwebs? Or is it available locally?

    I’m going to assume the feed you’re consuming does not require complicated requests or authentication.

    So here’s an AJAX example using with jQuery and a GET request

    XML Example (productsfeed.xml)

    <products>
    <product id="prod1" name="iMac" price="2000" vendor="Apple">
        <stock>10</stock>
    </product>
    <product id="prod2" name="iPad" price="500" vendor="Apple">
        <stock>50</stock>
    </product>
    <product id="prod3" name="Galaxy S3" price="500" vendor="Samsung">
        <stock>100</stock>
    </product>
</products>

    Example HTML with ajax call and a dropdown with products.

    <!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
    <head>
        <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script>
        $(document).ready(function(){
            $.ajax({
                url: 'http://myhost.com/webservice', // Url to the webservice or feed
                // Here goes all the "shenanigans" regarding the web service, like
                // request type, headers to send, etc..
                success: function(xml) {
                    $(xml).find('product').each(function(){
                        var id     = $(this).attr('id');
                        var name   = $(this).attr('name');
                        var price  = $(this).attr('price');
                        var vendor = $(this).attr('vendor');
                        var stock  = $(this).find('stock').text();

                        var $selectItem = $('<option></option>');
                        $selectItem.attr('value', id);
                        $selectItem.attr('data-id', id);
                        $selectItem.attr('data-price', price);
                        $selectItem.attr('data-vendor', vendor);
                        $selectItem.attr('data-stock', stock);
                        $selectItem.html(name);

                        $selectItem.appendTo('#plist');
                    });

                }
            });
        });
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div><span>Product List</span></div>
        <div id="plist-wrapper">
            <select id="plist">

            </select>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

    Now with PHP

    If it’s a webservice you can use cURL

    $url = 'http://myhost.com/webservice';

// HTTP Headers to send to the webservice
// specific to the webservice you're consuming
$headers = array();

$ch = curl_init();

// curl_setopt to set the options
// see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

//headers if needed
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);

// Send the request and check the response
if (($result = curl_exec($ch)) === FALSE) {
    echo 'Failed with' . curl_error($ch) . '<br />';
} else {
    echo "Success!<br />\n";
}
curl_close($ch);

    If it’s not a webservice (just a xml file) you can use file_get_contents

    $result = file_get_contents('http://myhost.com/productsfeed.xml');

    To parse the xml and show the dropdown select menu

    $xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->loadXML($result);

$html = new DOMDocument();
$htmlSource = 
'<html>
    <head></head>
    <body>
        <div><span>Product List</span></div>
        <div id="plist-wrapper">
            <select id="plist"></select>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>';

$html->loadHTML($htmlSource);
$selectList = $html->getElementsByTagName('select')->item(0);
$optionItem = $html->createElement('option');

$prodNodeList = $xml->getElementsByTagName('product');

foreach ($prodNodeList as $prodNode) {
    $id     = $prodNode->getAttribute('id');
    $name   = $prodNode->getAttribute('name');
    $price  = $prodNode->getAttribute('price');
    $vendor = $prodNode->getAttribute('vendor');

    $option = clone $optionItem;
    $option->setAttribute('value', $id);
    $option->setAttribute('data-id', $id);
    $option->setAttribute('data-price', $price);
    $option->setAttribute('data-vendor', $vendor);
    $option->nodeValue = $name;
    $selectList->appendChild($option);
}

print $html->saveHTML();
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