I have a medium sized video game website that uses PHP. I'm affiliated with dealtime.com and am trying to get the full functionality out of their service.

I want to include XML into my PHP rendered game reviews. They gave me an example URL to show the XML. Here is the URL/code/feed:

http://mb.dealtime.com/scripts/GSIsa...nd_Ruby/BEFID-

The URL does a simple HTML "GET" to show the XML. How would I take the XML feed and shoot it into my PHP?

Here is the syntax for the links if you needed:

http://mb.dealtime.com/scripts/GSIsa...A-yyy/UIP-zzz/

Thanks in advance.

Later versions of PHP do include fairly solid XML support but I tend to find them bulky and overkill for what's needed. On my site I display latest XML feeds from several sites and the method I use, because it works fine for me, is roughly:

open the url using code similar to:

PHP Code:

$filereadbuffersize = 4096;
$hFeed = @fopen($url_to_xml_feed,"r");
if($hFeed)
{
    #    read specified amount into buffer
    $contents = @fread($hFeed, $filereadbuffersize);
    fclose($hFeed); 


This reads 4k of data from the URL into a variable called contents. I then use simple strpos() lookups to find the XML tags I'm after and know exist and strip out the data from within.

Are you after specifics for your situation or did you just want this sort of average overview? If the former then you'd need to work out what, from the XML output, you actually wanted to retrieve.

Well the URL->XML will change per page... Let me check out that snippet of code and see what happens. Thanks for the reply.

Strange. The concept sounds ideal, but when added to a test page; the code shows up and not the actual content.

Hello,
I had this problem a while ago. I had to set up the XML feed for a PPC engine from http://www.browsehosts.com on my site
the browsehosts admin helped me set it up.
Here's the code which is on http://www.hostlead.com/toplist/ :

<?php

class Record {
var $url;
var $bid;
var $siteurl;
var $title;
var $description;
function Record ($aa) {
foreach ($aa as $k=>$v)
$this->$k = $aa[$k];
}
}

function readDatabase($filename) {
$data = file_get_contents($filename);
//$data = implode("",file($filename));
$parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_parser_set_option($parser,XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLD ING,0);
xml_parser_set_option($parser,XML_OPTION_SKIP_WHIT E,1);
xml_parse_into_struct($parser,$data,$values,$tags) ;
xml_parser_free($parser);

// loop through the structures
foreach ($tags as $key=>$val) {
if ($key == "record") {
$ranges = $val;
for ($i=0; $i < count($ranges); $i+=2) {
$offset = $ranges[$i] + 1;
$len = $ranges[$i + 1] - $offset;
$tdb[] = parseit(array_slice($values, $offset, $len));
}
} else {
continue;
}
}
return $tdb;
}

function parseit($mvalues) {
for ($i=0; $i < count($mvalues); $i++)
$record[$mvalues[$i]["tag"]] = $mvalues[$i]["value"];
return new Record($record);
}

$db = readDatabase("http://www.browsehosts.com/xmlsearch.php?keywords=budget+hosting&pageresult=2 0&startat=0&adult_filter=0&username=hostlead");

//function to print each result:
function printresult ($value,$name) {
print("
<li><strong><font size=\"2\"><a href='$value->url' target=\"_top\">$value->title</a></font></strong><br>$value->description
(Cost to advertiser: <a href=\"http://www.browsehosts.com/signup.php?referal=hostlead\">\$$value->bid</a>)<br></li>
");
}
//Actually print the stuff:
print "<font size=\"1em\" face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">";
print "<ol>\n"; //using an ordered list, with font setup above
array_walk($db,printresult);
print "</ol></font>\n";


?>

I know yours will be different but I hope this kind of helps you.

HostLead

I think I have a javascript to do it. PM me if u need it and will email it to you. or send the download link here in the forums.

I'd love to check out that javascript if you have it. That was my next remidiation. 'Preciate the link.