Question

I’m working on a small hobby project for personal use, which requires a way to store some values. The three ways of doing this that I could come up with were using: a MySQL db, a XML file or HTML5’s LocalStorage (please post a comment if there are other convenient ways you can think of).

Now since I might want to access the same values from another browser, for instance a mobile device, LocalStorage is clearly not the way to do it. Now when it comes to XML, I know it is only meant as a mean of transporting data, while data storage should be done in MySQL. However, since this is a small project which only would require a XML file of no more than a couple kilobytes, it feels like using XML would be more convenient in this case than setting up a MySQL db. Am I right?

Assuming I want to use XML, how do I append some nodes using a) PHP and b) JQuery or otherwise? Which one do you think is the most convenient way to do it?

I found that there are few well-written examples out there of how to do this (especially with JQuery I wasn’t able to find an example of how to append an XML file in a straightforward way), so it would be awesome if you could attach some sample code for comparison, thank you!

Answer 1

First of all – jQuery is client side script library. It means that actions performed using jQuery (inc. XML file manipulation) are done on the client side and doesn’t affect the server side. One may say that jQuery can preform actions on the server side, by using AJAX, but in fact it is the server script (php/perl/asp(x)) is the one preforming the action.

So let’s say that you have a small amount of data that you need to query and update. This can be done by either using “flat” file system or using database.

1. Using flat files – CSV or XML is the easy option.
   • CSV/XML files can be manipulated using file-get-contents and file_put_contents. If you choose to use XML, you can use the excellent SimpleXML lib ( example based guide can be found here ) Using XML allows you to create advanced date structures,
   • XML together with SimpleXML ( example based guide can be found here ) as awesome. Using XML also allows you to create advanced date structures
   • the downside is that updating the flat files will mean a pretty big security risk as you’ll need to give write permissions to one of the folders of your website, and this usually is bad idea.
2. DB – MySQL or SQLite (as @garrett-albright sudgested) may seem to be some overkill at first but using SQL is actually going to save you time (as the code will be simpler, you’ll relay on well tested and documented objects) and there are lots of CRUD generators and classes that will do the most of the work for you. With the DB you can use
   • MySQL – great DB, seems to be PHP’s BFF, easy to use very very well documented and usually comes free with hosting packages.
   • SQLite – my weapon of choice in small DB, doesn’t need a service to run, practically zero-configuration DB.
   • Both of the DB options support PDO Which will allow you to write the code one and change databases and platforms freely.