Looking for reasons to use XML with PHP...

[spaceman]

From all I'm reading about XML, it seems like the way of the future.

I'm a PHP/MySQL web developer. My question is: what reasons are there right now to apply/use XML techniques in the web development process today? I mean, aside from well-formedness, and future compatibility, etc, etc, what are some examples of actual practical 'things' I can do right now with XML to benefit my clients (and therefore my business)?

Thanks for your comments.

[Kevin Yank]

The most common use of XML in the Web development process today would have to be content formatting. If you store your content as XML documents, you can define a set of XSL stylesheets for different display methods. One stylesheet would convert an XML document to HTML for display on your site. Another might convert it to a simplified version suitable for printing. Still another could be used to convert it to plain text for use in a "email this article to a friend" feature on your site.

Although PHP's built-in XML parser is not well suited to this sort of application, installing PHP's Java interaction features and then using them to access a high-quality Java XML parser can reduce the above transformations to a matter of 3-4 lines of PHP code (instead of pages and pages of inefficient and error-prone PHP regular expressions).

The practicality of this sort of system is something we're looking into at SitePoint.com at the moment. You can see how it would be a useful system for our type of site.

Here's a nice, short run-down of the options open to PHP developers who want to make use of XML:

PHP developers: Fill your XML toolbox

[kunal]

well.. i dun really understand the hype.. i have read a lil on it.. and i wasnt very impressed... all it does is substitute normal code to normal terms... something like vB code.. so something like this wouldnt be all that tuff to make right?

or am i totally confused?