Converting PHP arrays to XML

I thought I’d share with you a PHP class I found useful lately. I had to take a comma-delimited text file and turn it into an XML text stream. With the ubiquity of XML these days, you might find it useful too, if you dabble in PHP software development.

The class:

class array2xml {

   var $output = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n";

   function array2xml($array, $root = 'root', $element = 'element') {     
      $this->output .= $this->make($array, $root, $element);
   }

   function make($array, $root, $element) {
      $xml = "<{$root}>\n";
      foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
         if (is_array($value)) {
            $xml .= $this->make($value, $element, $key);
         } else {
            if (is_numeric($key)) {
               $xml .= "<{$root}>{$value}</{$root}>\n";
            } else {
               $xml .= "<{$key}>{$value}</{$key}>\n";
            }
         }
      }
      $xml .= "</{$root}>\n";      
      return $xml;
   }

}

The script:

// initialise variables
$array = array();
$i = 0;

// open the text file
$file = file('cc.txt');

// create array of country names and codes
foreach ($file as $line) {
   $line = split(',', trim($line));
   $array[$i]['code'] = $line[1];
   $array[$i]['name'] = $line[0];
   $i++;
}

// convert the array to xml output
$xml = new array2xml($array, 'countries', 'country');
echo $xml->output;

Assuming you’ve got a text file named "cc.txt", which looks like this:

Argentina,AR
Australia,AU
Croatia,HR
Italy,IT
Malta,MT
Poland,PL
Serbia,RS
Ukraine,UA

The above script will produce this as output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<countries>
<country>
<code>AR</code>
<name>Argentina</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>AU</code>
<name>Australia</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>HR</code>
<name>Croatia</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>IT</code>
<name>Italy</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>MT</code>
<name>Malta</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>PL</code>
<name>Poland</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>RS</code>
<name>Serbia</name>
</country>
<country>
<code>UA</code>
<name>Ukraine</name>
</country>
</countries>

I won’t go into details about the relationship between the last two arguments of the "array2xml()" function and the XML elements because that should pretty much be obvious if you’re a programmer. If not, then you’re likely to be bored by now anyway.

Posted in PHP, Programming, Tips by Ivan