Urgent! DomDocument Vs SimpleXML in PHP

PHP
1

Hello All,

I am very new to XML.I have seen various examples where
xml document can be accessed, manipulated,etc.
Some examples using DomDocument like


$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load("note.xml");

and some examples using SimplXML like


$xml = simplexml_load_file("test.xml");

But can anyone explain me what is the exact difference between these two and which one to use?

I have googled but I didn’t find any solution.

2

I’ve found that SimpleXML is easier to use when you just need to parse it. If you somehow need to manipulate the XML data then DOM is better. It’s not really a problem because you can easily convert a SimpleXML document to a DOM one instead and vice versa.

3

Like domDocument (createElement) can we create the element with simpleXML?

4

Well, there is SimpleXMLElement::addChild(), but as I said above, the DOM classes are much more powerful in that respect (although they might be slightly more complicated to use).

5

Yeah,you already said that for manipulating the xml domDocument is good and for reading the xml data simpleXML is used. right?
In the link you specified, there is
adding a ‘movie’ child to the parent element.
but we can not create the Parent Element which using simpleXML we can create in domDocument.
is it right?
I want to clear my doubts and to know the concept.

6

Hi,

I am not really a PHP programmer but I used this code which works fine on my test server but I get an error when I run on my Web Host server. I came accross this post and now I am wondering if maybe I could get the simpleXML equivalent to this code because my host doesn’t seem to support DOM… I think I need a new web host.


$doc = new DomDocument();
$doc->Load($_GET['u']);

$Contact = $doc->getElementsByTagName('Contact');

foreach($Contact AS $node)
{
    $name = $node->getAttribute('Name');
    $note = $node->getElementsByTagName('Notes');
	$note1 = $note->item(0);
	$notes = $note1->nodeValue;
    print "<h3>$name</h3>";
    print "<p>$notes</p>";
    print "<hr />";
}

?>