Question

Trying to generate XML file from returend SQL query results.
The SQL query returns ItemId, ItemName, ItemDescription from Items table.
I want to list the ItemNames inside XML like so:

XML

...
<item>
    <name>ItemName1</name>
</item>
<item>
    <name>ItemName2</name>
</item>
...

PHP

...
    while($items = @mysql_fetch_assoc($query)){
    foreach($items as $row){
    }
        $node = $doc->createElement('item');
        $node = $root->appendChild($node);
        $child = $doc->createElement('name');
        $child = $node->appendChild($child);
        $value = $doc->createTextNode($row['ItemName']); // !
        $value = $child->appendChild($value);
    }}
...

My XML structure generates properly but the problem is I get the first letter of each of the item’s ItemDescription, instead ItemName inside every name element like so:

...
<name>D</name>
...
<name>H</name>
...

First two items have their string descriptions start with letters D and H.

What is causing this behaviour?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, the problem is the foreach() which is looping through each key/value pair in the $row array. I don’t think this is the behavior you desire, because each row in mysql results set is not usually multi-dimensional. Because the index ‘ItemName’ is not found, it’s defaulting to [0] (the first character of the value).

Try just the while() loop:

...
    $resultset = mysql_query( $query );
    while($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($resultset)){
        $node = $doc->createElement('item');
        $node = $root->appendChild($node);
        $child = $doc->createElement('name');
        $child = $node->appendChild($child);
        $value = $doc->createTextNode($row['ItemName']); // !
        $value = $child->appendChild($value);
    }
...