xml example on php.net

[jackli]

i'm trying to understand example1 on http://us2.php.net/xml

It seems like if you take out:

   for ($i = 0; $i < $depth[$parser]; $i++) {
       echo "  ";
   } 

and make endElement($parser,$name) a blank function (i.e., take out its content), and remove all references to $depth, you can still get an array out of the contents of the XML file.

so:

1) i'm not sure what the $depth variable does or what it's used for.
2) i'm also not sure why they put in a for loop that only echo's " "...
3) how is $depth[$parser] being incremented?
4) if i were to take out the for loop of spaces i quoted above, and eliminate the contents of endElement and all references to $depth, would i be missing any of the XML data?

[Mittineague]

1: The $depth variable keeps track of how deep the child nodes are. eg. below, "title" and "content" would each be 1 deep, "subtitle" is 2 deep.
2: The spaces indent child nodes for better XML readability. eg.

<item>
    <title>one</title>
        <subtitle>a</subtitle>
    <content>blah, blah, blah</content>
</item>

instead of

<item>
<title>one</title>
<subtitle>a</subtitle>
<content>blah, blah, blah</content>
</item>

3: $depth[$parser] is incremented in the startElement function and decremented in the endElement function. When the parser comes across a tag (<start> or </end>) the appropriate function changes the variable's value.
4: You could safely take out the spaces loop if you didn't mind losing the indentation (IMHO a few extra spaces for much easier readability is worth it, especially with more complex files). I don't know what would happen if you removed all the deptth stuff, but I have a feeling it wouldn't be good. I guess you could try it and see.