Re: $35 to the first person who can do this XML-parsing PHP script

On Mon, March 12, 2007 8:05 pm, Myron Turner wrote: > Richard Lynch wrote: >> For something that simple in PHP4, I didn't even bother with the >> 50-line expat lib solution... >> >> A couple preg matches, or even just strtok and call it done... >> >> //assume file_get_contents is too "new"... >> //probably wrong, but be safe >> $xml = implode('', >> file('www.librarytools.com/events/sampledata.txt')); >> >> preg_match_all('|<result i="[0-9+]">.*<f >> n="eventname">([^<]*)</f>.*(f >> n="eventnextoccurrencedate">([^<]*)</f>)?|msiU', $xml, >> $eventdata); >> >> var_dump($eventdata); >> >> I probably got the regex wrong -- I usually do... >> > Of course, there are all kinds of hacks which can be used for simple > situations--even sometimes complex situations. I recently wrote a > Perl > script for a complex screen-scraping task which by-passed all of > Perl's > standard parsers and used Perl's regular expression facilities. But > then I know how to use Perl's parsers if I have to, as well as when > not > to use them if I prefer. So now Rob Gould, who asked the original > question, knows a few things about the expat parser which he didn't > understand before and will be able to use it in the future. That seems > to me worthwhile, and more useful in the long run than scratching out > a > few regular expression hacks that have limited local applicability. In my experience, the pain of the expat library was worse more often than it was useful, for the XML tasks I had to accomplish. Certainly if you need a generic XML handling sort of thing in PHP4, and upgrading is not an option, go with expat. If you just need to parse some silly little XML file, a PCRE hack is about 5 lines of code, and 5 minutes, instead of 5 days of typing. YMMV NOTE: If you have any wiggle room at all, UPGRADE to PHP 5 for XML processing. It's like night and day. -- Some people have a "gift" link here. Know what I want? I want you to buy a CD from some starving artist. http://cdbaby.com/browse/from/lynch Yeah, I get a buck. So?