Question

I’ve got an xml output self-generated from a cms (drupal)

I need to work on this xml, but the automatic output generate a lot of useless nodes, and i need to erase them.

This is a sample similar to the original XML i’ve got to modify (a very semplified version, of course)

 <node>
       <title>AAAAAA</title>
       <category>1</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

 <node>
       <title>ZZZZZ</title>
       <category>7</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>


 <node>
       <title>XXXXXXXX</title>
       <category>5</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

 <node>
       <title>BBBBBBB</title>
       <category>1</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

 <node>
       <title>CCCCCCCCC</title>
       <category>1</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

 <node>
       <title>YYYYYYYY</title>
       <category>4</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

Let’s suppose to have a check on the category, i want to keep only the nodes with category 1.

All i need to do is to parse the xml recognizing a certain tag (for example )
and erase all the useless information, in order to have something like this example.

 <node>
       <title>AAAAAA</title>
       <category>1</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

 <node>
       <title>BBBBBBB</title>
       <category>1</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

 <node>
       <title>CCCCCCCCC</title>
       <category>1</category>
       <description>blablabla</description>
 </node>

The idea is: check a certain tag, and keep all the information in the node…
How can I do something like this?
I suppose I’ve got to use something like DOM.
I’d prefer to use php, but also java is welcome.

Answer 1

Consider the following example:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);
$nodes = $xml->xpath('//node[category[text()!="1"]]');

foreach ($nodes as $node) {
    $dom = dom_import_simplexml($node);
    $dom->parentNode->removeChild($dom);
}

// Now $xml is modified and consists of the nodes with category 1 only
echo '<pre>'; print_r($xml); echo '</pre>';