Question

I’m trying to get data from multiple XML feeds and copy that data to my local database. I’ve tried looking into SimpleXML and some other things I’ve found on the internet but I’m wondering what the best route to take with something like this.

I’m looking for something that will not only get the XML from the secure location but also convert it to a series of arrays.

Answer 1

This is a pretty simple process that you can accomplish with CURL and some sort XML to array class. I’ll give you details on both here.

The PHP:

/* run mozilla agent */
$agent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $agent); //make it act decent
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);         //set the $url to where your request goes
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //set this flag for results to the variable
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);           //if you're making a post, put the data here
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post); //as a key/value pair in $post
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0); //This is required for HTTPS certs if
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0); //you don't have some key/password action

/* execute the request */
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

/* now parse the resulting XML using XMLToArray class from 
Razzaque Rupom http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phpresource/ */
require_once('lib/class.XmlToArray.php');
$parser = new XmlToArray($result);
$data = $parser->createArray();

And there you have it.

• Mitch