PHP - AJAX XML Parser

Using PHP with AJAX, we can parse an XML document from local directory as well as on a server. The following example demonstrates how to parse XML with web browser.

The client-end script renders a HTML form and defines a JavaScript function for sending a HTTP request to the server with XMLHttpRequest object.

On the server, a PHP script loads the DOM object from the required XML document, fetches the selected course from $_REQUEST variable, and renders the details of the course chosen as the response back to the client.

Step 1

The following XML document is stored on the document root of the XAMPP server.

PHP CODE

&lt;?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?&gt;
&lt;CATALOG&gt;

   &lt;SUBJECT&gt;
      &lt;COURSE&gt;Android&lt;/COURSE&gt;
      &lt;COUNTRY&gt;India&lt;/COUNTRY&gt;
      &lt;COMPANY&gt;CodesCompiler&lt;/COMPANY&gt;
      &lt;PRICE&gt;$10&lt;/PRICE&gt;
      &lt;YEAR&gt;2015&lt;/YEAR&gt;
   &lt;/SUBJECT&gt;

   &lt;SUBJECT&gt;
      &lt;COURSE&gt;Html&lt;/COURSE&gt;
      &lt;COUNTRY&gt;India&lt;/COUNTRY&gt;
      &lt;COMPANY&gt;CodesCompiler&lt;/COMPANY&gt;
      &lt;PRICE&gt;$15&lt;/PRICE&gt;
      &lt;YEAR&gt;2015&lt;/YEAR&gt;
   &lt;/SUBJECT&gt;

   &lt;SUBJECT&gt;
      &lt;COURSE&gt;Java&lt;/COURSE&gt;
      &lt;COUNTRY&gt;India&lt;/COUNTRY&gt;
      &lt;COMPANY&gt;CodesCompiler&lt;/COMPANY&gt;
      &lt;PRICE&gt;$20&lt;/PRICE&gt;
      &lt;YEAR&gt;2015&lt;/YEAR&gt;
   &lt;/SUBJECT&gt;

   &lt;SUBJECT&gt;
      &lt;COURSE&gt;Microsoft&lt;/COURSE&gt;
      &lt;COUNTRY&gt;India&lt;/COUNTRY&gt;
      &lt;COMPANY&gt;CodesCompiler&lt;/COMPANY&gt;
      &lt;PRICE&gt;$25&lt;/PRICE&gt;
      &lt;YEAR&gt;2015&lt;/YEAR&gt;
   &lt;/SUBJECT&gt;
   
&lt;/CATALOG&gt;

Step 2

The AJAX code below has a HTML form and a JavaScript function to raise HTTP request through XMLHttpRequest object.

try-it-yourself — CodesCompiler

Preview

Step 3

The server-side PHP script to search within the XML document is as follows −

PHP CODE

&lt;?php
   $q = $_GET["q"];

   $xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
   $xmlDoc-&gt;load("test.xml");

   $x = $xmlDoc-&gt;getElementsByTagName('COURSE');

   for ($i = 0; $i&lt;=$x-&gt;length-1; $i++) {
      if ($x-&gt;item($i)-&gt;nodeType == 1) {
         if ($x-&gt;item($i)-&gt;childNodes-&gt;item(0)-&gt;nodeValue == $q) {
            $y = ($x-&gt;item($i)-&gt;parentNode);
         }
      }
   }

   $cd = ($y-&gt;childNodes);

   for ($i = 0;$i&lt;$cd-&gt;length;$i++) {
      if ($cd-&gt;item($i)-&gt;nodeType == 1) {
         echo("<b>" . $cd-&gt;item($i)-&gt;nodeName . ":</b> ");
         echo($cd-&gt;item($i)-&gt;childNodes-&gt;item(0)-&gt;nodeValue);
         echo("<br>");
      }
   }
?&gt;

Visit “http://localhost/example.php” to let the user select a course. Upon selection, the relevant details are fetched from the server and displayed as below −