Chapter 5. XML
PHP 5 has a completely new set of XML extensions that address major problems in PHP 4âs XML extensions. While PHP 4 allows you to manipulate XML, its XML tools are only superficially related. Each tool covers one part of the XML experience, but they werenât designed to work together, and PHP 4 support for the more advanced XML features is often patchy. Not so in PHP 5. The new XML extensions:
Work together as a unified whole
Are standardized on a single XML library:
libxml2
Fully comply with W3 specifications
Efficiently process data
Provide you with the right XML tool for your job
Additionally, following the PHP tenet that creating web applications
should be easy, thereâs a new XML extension that
makes it simple to read and alter XML documents. The aptly named
SimpleXML extension allows you to interact with the information in an
XML document as though these pieces of information are arrays and
objects, iterating through them with foreach
loops
and editing them in place merely by assigning new values to
variables.
XML Extensions in PHP 5
PHP 5 has five major XML extensions. Each one has different features, advantages, and costs:
- DOM
The 800-pound gorilla of XML. You can do everything and the
<kitchen-sink>
with DOM, but navigating through your documents can be cumbersome.- SAX
PHPâs original XML extension. SAX is a streaming, or event-based, parser that uses less memory than DOM, but frequently requires more complex PHP code.
- SimpleXML
A new PHP 5-only extension ...
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