Class: IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl

The XML Parser extension (expat) is required to use IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl.

The class provides a pure PHP4 implementation of the PHP5 interface SimpleXML. As with PHP5's simpleXML it is what it says: simple. Nevertheless, it is an easy way to deal with XML data, especially for read only access.

Because it's not possible to use the PHP5 ArrayIterator interface with PHP4 there are some differences between this implementation and that of PHP5:

• The access to the root node has to be explicit in IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl, not implicit as with PHP5. Write $doc->root->node instead of $doc->node
• You cannot acces CDATA using array syntax. Use methods CDATA() and setCDATA() instead.
• You cannot access attributes directly with array syntax. Always use attributes() to read and setAttribute() to write attributes.
• Comments are ignored.
• Last and least, this is not as fast as PHP5 SimpleXML--it is pure PHP4.

The PHP5 implementation of IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl will provide a wrapper or proxy object with the same name to keep compatibility.

Example:

 :simple.xml:
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalon="yes"?>
 <root>
   <node>
     <child gender="m">Tom Foo</child>
     <child gender="f">Tamara Bar</child>
   <node>
 </root>
 
 ---
 
 // read and write a document
 $impl = new IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl;
 $doc  = $impl->load_file('simple.xml');
 print $doc->asXML();
 
 // access a given node's CDATA
 print $doc->root->node->child[0]->CDATA(); // Tom Foo
 
 // access attributes
 $attr = $doc->root->node->child[1]->attributes();
 print $attr['gender']; // f
 
 // access children
 foreach( $doc->root->node->children() as $child ) {
   print $child->CDATA();
 }
 
 // change or add CDATA
 $doc->root->node->child[0]->setCDATA('Jane Foo');
 
 // change or add attribute
 $doc->root->node->child[0]->setAttribute('gender', 'f');

Note: SimpleXML cannot be used to access sophisticated XML doctypes using datatype ANY (e.g. XHTML). With a DOM implementation you can handle this.

constructor IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl

method import_dom

method load_file

method load_string