PHP: DOMDocument->createElement()

DOMDocument->createElement()

inayat_us21 at yahoo dot com
06-Feb-2006 10:05


Simple way to create an rss feed using php5

<?php



//create xml doc

$doc = new DOMDocument("1.0");



//create the rss element

$root = $doc->createElement('rss');

$root = $doc->appendChild($root);

$root->setAttribute('version','2.0');



//create the channel element

$channel = $doc->createElement("channel");

$channel = $root->appendChild($channel);



$elements = array();

$elements["title"] = "my feed's title";

$elements["link"] = "http://mydomain.com/index.rss";

$elements["description"] = "Demonstration feed created using PHP5 and the DOM extension. The php script that generated this document can be found at : http://thousandrobots.com/dev/xml/dom/auto.phps";

$elements["language"] = "en-us";

$elements["copyright"] = "copyright 2005 thousandrobots.com";

$elements["docs"] = "http://backend.userland.com/rss";

$elements["generator"] = "thousand robots dom-based rss generator";

$elements["managingEditor"] = "editor@spam.thousandrob0ts.com (ADM)";

$elements["webMaster"] = "webmaster@spam.thousandrob0ts.com (ADM)";

$elements["lastBuildDate"] = "Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:39:07 EST";



foreach ($elements as $elementname => $elementvalue)

{

 $elementname = $doc->createElement($elementname);

 $elementname = $channel->appendChild($elementname);

 $elementname->appendChild($doc->createTextNode($elementvalue));

}



//clear the array

unset($elements);



//now create the first feed item

//instead, you could just pull some items from a db into an elements[] array.

$elements[0]["title"] = "title of first item";

$elements[0]["description"] = "a short description of the first item";

$elements[0]["link"] = "http://thousandrobots.com/?article=1";

$elements[0]["author"] = "author@spam.thousandrob0ts.com (ADM)";

$elements[0]["pubDate"] = "Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:39:07 EST";

$elements[0]["category"] = "tech";

$elements[0]["guid"] = "http://thousandrobots.com/?article=1";



//create the other items

$elements[1]["title"] = "title of next item";

$elements[1]["description"] = "a short description of the next item";

$elements[1]["link"] = "http://thousandrobots.com/?article=N";

$elements[1]["author"] = "author@spam.thousandrob0ts.com (ADM)";

$elements[1]["pubDate"] = "Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:39:07 EST";

$elements[1]["category"] = "tech";

$elements[1]["guid"] = "http://thousandrobots.com/?article=N";



//loop through each item and add its elements to the tree

foreach ( $elements as $element )

{

    //create the item element

    $item = $doc->createElement("item");

    $item = $channel->appendChild($item);

    

    foreach ( $element as $elementname => $elementvalue )

    {

        $elementname = $doc->createElement($elementname);

        $elementname = $item->appendChild($elementname);

        $elementname->appendChild($doc->createTextNode($elementvalue));

    }

}



//output the xml

header('Content-Type: text/xml');

echo $doc->saveXML();



?>

php at pureftpd dot org
15-Aug-2005 04:40


What is missing from the documentation is that arguments for createElement() *must* be escaped with htmlspecialchars().



Without it, "&" characters will produce invalid XML.

brian dot sanders at cometsystems dot com
20-Jan-2005 02:08


Regarding paul squigly-symbol allofus dot org's comment below:



Neither this method, nor setting the nodeValue property, encodes ampersands (&).  You must manually encode them or use the textContent property (which encodes them as expected.)



However, setting textContent on an element created by DOMDocument::createElement does NOT work.  You must create a text node, set its textContent, then append the text node to your element:



<?php



$dom = DomDocument::loadXML(<<<XML

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<foo/>

XML

);



$element = $dom->createElement('bar');

$element->appendChild($dom->createTextNode('pb & j'));

$dom->documentElement->appendChild($element);



?>

franp at free dot fr
04-Aug-2004 02:02


AFAIK there is no way to return as a string a newly created node or element before attaching it to an existing DOMDocument.



If you need to display a newly created node or element for debugging purposes - certainly you will at some point :-( , you must temporary append it to an existing DOMDocument. 



Example :

<?php

$newQuant = $caddy->createElement("quantity");

$newQuantText = $caddy->createTextNode("5");

$newQuant->appendChild($newQuantText);

?>



// Until now no way to check the result

// Let's append it to an existing DOMDocument :

<?php

$caddy->documentElement->appendChild($newQuant);    

?>



// Now we can display it as a string :

<?php

echo nl2br(htmlspecialchars(

$caddy->saveXML($caddy->documentElement->lastChild)));

?>



// This return : 

<?php

<quantity>5</quantity>

?>

        

// Do not forget to remove the appended node as it may  :

<?php

$caddy->documentElement->removeChild($newQuant);

?>



That's it !

It is a convenient workaround for the lack of "transformToXML" in php5.

DOMDocument->createElement()

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