How to display XML data in web page using PHP ?

In this article, we are going to display data present in an XML file on a web page using PHP through the XAMPP server. PHP is a server-side scripting language that is mainly for processing web data. The XML stands for an extensible markup language.

Requirements:

• XAMPP server

Syntax:

<root>
   <child>
   <subchild>.....</subchild>
   </child>
</root>

Approach: We are going to use mainly two functions in our PHP code. The simplexml_load_file() function is used to convert an XML document to an object.

• simplexml_load_file

  simplexml_load_file(name of XML file)
  

• children(): The children() function finds the children of a specified node.

  $xml_data->children()
  

Steps to execute:

• Step 1: Start XAMPP server.
  
• Open notepad and type the following codes in xml_data.xml and code.php formats The xml_data.xml: Consider student XML data as an example.

  xml_data.xml

  
  

  
  
  

  <?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?> <collegedata>    <department category = "IT">       <subjects lang = "en">java</subjects>       <name>G.Sravan Kumar</name>       <age>22</age>       <marks>98</marks>       <address>guntur</address>    </department>          <department category = "CSE">       <subjects lang = "en">Python</subjects>       <name>B. Naga sudheer</name>       <age>28</age>       <marks>96</marks>        <address>guntur</address>    </department>          <department category = "IT">       <subjects lang = "en">sql</subjects>       <name>Radha</name>       <age>25</age>       <marks>78</marks>        <address>guntur</address>    </department>         </collegedata>

• Step 3:The following is the code for code.php file.

  code.php

  
  

  
  
  

  <?php // Start php code // Load xml file into xml_data variable $xml_data = simplexml_load_file("xml_data.xml") or  die("Error: Object Creation failure"); // Use foreach loop to display data and for sub elements access, // We will use children() function foreach ($xml_data->children() as $data) {     //display each sub element in xml file     echo "Subject name : ", $data->subjects . "<br> ";     echo "Student name : ", $data->name . "<br> ";     echo "Student age : ", $data->age . "<br> ";     echo "Student marks : ", $data->marks . "<br>";     echo "Student address : ", $data->address . "<br>";     echo "------------------------------------";     echo "<br>"; } ?>

• Step 4: Save these two files in xampp/htdocs/geek folder. The developer can use any other folder instead of geek folder.

Output: Open your browser and type localhost/geek/code.php to see the output.

XML data