Question

DOM XPath query

Asked by: nasx

Hi!
I have a XML DOMDocument object where I need to find a combination of a ID and a ITEM_TYPE tag.
When we have a result, I need to know the ID and ITEM_TYPE for all parents back to the root.
All parents ID and ITEM_TYPE needs to be stored in a array.

An example XML structure is listed below. Lets say we wil search for the combination item_type=D and id=10, and return all parents item_type and id.

Thanks for the help

<response>
<status_code>0</status_code>
<message/>
<results>
    <folder_id>9</folder_id>
    <folder_name>Minpath</folder_name>
    <full_path>Minpath</full_path>
    <items>
        <item>
            <id>10</id>
            <item_type>F</item_type>
            <title>Aktuelt</title>
            <filename>Aktuelt</filename>
            <items>
                <item>
                    <id>43</id>
                    <item_type>D</item_type>
                    <title>My doc 2</title>
                    <filename>Dokument 2.pdf</filename>
                    <items>
                        <item>
                            <id>10</id>
                            <item_type>D</item_type>
                            <title>My title</title>
                            <filename>Dokument 4.pdf</filename>
                        </item>
                    </items>
               </item>
           </items>
        </item>
     </items>
</results>
</response>

                                  
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Asked On
2009-10-13 at 12:44:46ID24809006
Tags

DOM

,

XPath

,

PHP

Topics

XPath

,

PHP Scripting Language

,

Document Object Model

Participating Experts
1
Points
125
Comments
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Answers

 

by: zc2Posted on 2009-10-13 at 12:55:39ID: 25563770


Search an item with some combination of id an type using XPath like "//item[id='10' and item_type='D']",
then search all its ancestor using XPath "ancestor::item".
For each ancestor, get the id and item_type as children of the current ancestor item.

I'm sorry I can't provide you a sample, because I not familiar with PHP

 

by: nasxPosted on 2009-10-13 at 13:10:23ID: 25563960

Thanks for the XPath example! But I need this as a whole PHP solution. With returning parents.
I guess you could use XPath to find the node and then use DOM (parentNode) in a recursive function to return all parents up to the root? Just theories.. I dont know how to..

 

by: zc2Posted on 2009-10-13 at 15:16:52ID: 25565387

What XML/XSL implementation you're using in PHP? I only familiar with MSXML, and I guess you can call MSXML's COM objects from your PHP code. How about I'll give you a sample of using them written in JavaScript and you'll translate it into PHP?

 

by: nasxPosted on 2009-10-13 at 23:51:43ID: 25567851

zc2: I have a DOMDocument object in PHP where i load a XML string just like I showed in my question.
Something like:
$obj = new DOMDocument();
$obj->loadXML($response);

I dont use any XSL or anything. But need a solution on getting all parents as described in my question. And return all parents in a array.

 

by: zc2Posted on 2009-10-14 at 07:31:36ID: 25570922

I don't have PHP to verify how my sample works, but I hope if there are any errors, you'll easily fix them.
The main idea, you need to use the DOMXPath object to search elements as I described in my first comment.
I also provided a working sample written in JavaScript which calls MSXML DOM below. If your OS is a Windows, use cscript.exe to run it

<?php
$doc = new DOMDocument;
$doc->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$doc->Load('2.xml');
$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
$query = '//item[id="10" and item_type="D"]/ancestor::item';
$ancestors = $xpath->query($query);
foreach ($ancestors as $an_item ) {
    echo "id={$an_item->getElementsByTagName('id')->nodeValue}" .
         ", item_type={$an_item->getElementsByTagName('item_type')->nodeValue}";
}
?>
 
//  sample in JavaScript
 
var xmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument");
xmlDoc.async = false;
xmlDoc.load("2.xml");
if( xmlDoc.parseError.errorCode != 0 ) {
   var myErr = xmlDoc.parseError;
   WScript.Echo("You have error: " + myErr.reason);
} else {
   xmlDoc.setProperty( "SelectionLanguage", "XPath" )
   var ancestors = xmlDoc.documentElement.selectNodes( "//item[id='10' and item_type='D']/ancestor::item" );
   for( var i = 0; i < ancestors.length; i++ ) {
    var ancestor_item = ancestors.item(i);
    WScript.Echo( "id=" + ancestor_item.selectSingleNode("id").text +
         ", item_type=" + ancestor_item.selectSingleNode("item_type").text );
   }
}
                                              
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by: nasxPosted on 2009-10-14 at 08:25:20ID: 25571635

The PHP example looks good! It is printing out text but the ID and ITEM_TYPE is blank.
So there must be something wrong with the "$an_item->getElementsByTagName('id')->nodeValue" code.
Do you have an idea on this?

Thanks so far..

 

by: zc2Posted on 2009-10-14 at 08:30:31ID: 25571695

Yeah, I see at least one error.
getElementsByTagName('id') returns not an element, it returns a collection or list.
You need to take the first element of that collection:
$an_item->getElementsByTagName('id')->item(0)->nodeValue

see http://www.php.net/manual/en/domelement.getelementsbytagname.php for references

 

by: nasxPosted on 2009-10-14 at 12:38:17ID: 31640737

Thanks a lot! This was a excellent!

 

by: nasxPosted on 2009-10-14 at 12:39:06ID: 25574262

You rule man! Thanks!

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