Getting meta data (of any type) for an XML file being from it's URL.

Hi. I'm looking to process very large XML files without the need of first downloading them. To that end, SimpleXMLIterator('compress.zlib://http://www.site.com/products.xml.gz') is working perfectly. But a downside is that I have no information of my progress. Is there any mechanism available to get a position within the XML stream? I can use libxml_set_streams_context() to set a context (so I can provide POST data if needed for the HTTP request), but I can't see how to gain access to the stream within the libxml code (SimpleXML uses libxml). At the most basic, what I'm looking for is to be able to record a percentage complete. Even with compression, I'll be reading some bytes from a stream (either from http or from compress.zlib) and I want to know where I am in that stream. The HTTP header will tell me how big the file is (so that can easily be a HEAD request to get that data). Even if I DO save the file locally first, I still can't get a position. If I use the SimpleXMLIterator::count() method, I am unsure as to what will happen if I am using a stream (rather than a local file). If I use ... $xml = new SimpleXMLIterator(...); $items = $xml->count(); foreach($xml as $s_Tag => $o_Item) { ... } will the XML file be cached somewhere? Or will that depend upon the originating server supporting some sort of rewind/chunk mechanism? Any suggestions/ideas? Richard. -- Richard Quadling Twitter : EE : Zend : PHPDoc @RQuadling : e-e.com/M_248814.html : bit.ly/9O8vFY : bit.ly/lFnVea