PHP XML SAX Parser

Hello folks! welcome back to a new section of our tutorial on PHP. In this section of our PHP tutorial, we will be studying about the PHP XML SAX Parser.

SAX parser is used to parse xml files and it is better for memory management than the simple xml parser and the xml Dom parser. It does not retain any data in memory, so it can be used for very large files.

Example

The below example shows how to get data from xml using SAX API.

SAX.xml

SAX.xml should be as follows -

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?>
<tutors>
   <course>
      <name>Android</name>
      <country>Nigeria</country>
      <email>[email protected]</email>
      <phone>1234567788990</phone>
   </course>
   
   <course>
      <name>JavaScript</name>
      <country>Nigeria</country>
      <email>[email protected]</email>
      <phone>1234567788990</phone>
   </course>
   
   <course>
      <name>WorldPress</name>
      <country>Nigeria</country>
      <email>[email protected]</email>
      <phone>1234567788990</phone>
   </course>
</tutors>

READ: PHP Simple XML GET

SAX.php

PHP file should be as follows -

<?php
   //Reading XML using the SAX(Simple API for XML) parser 
   
   $tutors   = array();
   $elements   = null;
   
   // Called to this function when tags are opened 
   function startElements($parser, $name, $attrs) {
      global $tutors, $elements;
      
      if(!empty($name)) {
         if ($name == 'COURSE') {
            // creating an array to store information
            $tutors []= array();
         }
         $elements = $name;
      }
   }
   
   // Called to this function when tags are closed 
   function endElements($parser, $name) {
      global $elements;
      
      if(!empty($name)) {
         $elements = null;
      }
   }
   
   // Called on the text between the start and end of the tags
   function characterData($parser, $data) {
      global $tutors, $elements;
      
      if(!empty($data)) {
         if ($elements == 'NAME' || $elements == 'COUNTRY' ||  $elements == 'EMAIL' ||  $elements == 'PHONE') {
            $tutors[count($tutors)-1][$elements] = trim($data);
         }
      }
   }
   
   // Creates a new XML parser and returns a resource handle referencing it to be used by the other XML functions. 
   $parser = xml_parser_create(); 
   
   xml_set_element_handler($parser, "startElements", "endElements");
   xml_set_character_data_handler($parser, "characterData");
   
   // open xml file
   if (!($handle = fopen('sax.xml', "r"))) {
      die("could not open XML input");
   }
   
   while($data = fread($handle, 4096)) // read xml file {
      xml_parse($parser, $data);  // start parsing an xml document 
   }
   
   xml_parser_free($parser); // deletes the parser
   $i = 1;
   
   foreach($tutors as $course) {
      echo "course No - ".$i.'<br/>';
      echo "course Name - ".$course['NAME'].'<br/>';
      echo "Country - ".$course['COUNTRY'].'<br/>';
      echo "Email - ".$course['EMAIL'].'<br/>';
      echo "Phone - ".$course['PHONE'].'<hr/>'; 
      $i++; 
   }
?>

Output

When the above code is executed, it will produce the following result -

READ: PHP Simple XML Parser

Alright guys! This is where we are going to be rounding up for this tutorial post. In our next tutorial, we are going to be discussing about PHP - Dom Parser.

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