I need to create a treeview folder structure based off xml output, using JQuery or APEX

increasing points

If I'm understanding the problem correctly, you want the php file to generate the html for the tree?

if that is what is needed... then yes. The xml-gen.php file generates the XML, then possibly another php page can read the xml output from the first page and generate the tree structure. As I said earlier, I can generate a treeview structure no problem if I feed an actual XML file with a .XML extension to the page wanting to create the treeview, but I do not have that here. The situation I have is that a PHP file reads the database and creates an output of XML. I need to be able to read that output and then OUTPUT IT as a treeview folder structure from the xml-gen.php page.

if you look at the xml-gen.txt (xml-gen.php) page I attached, you will see that it creates output as XML - it does not write an XML file, but creates output AS xml.

Most of the treeview JS frameworks that are found on the web will create a treeview from XML. I have a php file that creates XML as output, but does not create an XML file. I need a php page or JS file that can read the output from the xml-gen page and create a dynamic treeview on the fly from the read.

Do you mean that you're not using the header() function to set the content-type to an XML content-type (e.g. "application/xml")?

if you look at the attached file above, you will see.

Have you tried simply using jQuery to do a normal AJAX request to read the output of that PHP script?

can you give me an example? if you need me to offer more points i can.

This looks like a good tutorial on doing that (it does cover some steps that you've already done though): http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-jquery 

P.S. An increase in points would not make a difference to me.

this article is good but it looks like i am going to have to fabricate something on my own using tutorials like this and js libraries like 'jstree' to come up with a way to read the output from the xml_gen.php to create a treeview on a new page.i really was hoping for a working example.

i guess i can give you credit Kravimir for pointing this page out to me... and you are right, it does cover steps i have already done.

hi alien109. thanks for this.
if you look at the file i attached - xml_gen.txt you can see that it does a connection to an Oracle db, does a query to the 'trees' table and pulls out column data based on a 'build_id' passed to the page.

the output from the query is then processed as xml using this:

===========

$doc = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
            $root = $doc->createElement('root');        // first one
            $root = $doc->appendChild($root);
            $node = $root;
            $previous_level = 0;

            while ($row = oci_fetch_array($stid)) {
                $level      = $row['LEVEL'];
                $name       = $row['NAME'];
                $filepath   = $row['PATH'];

                while ($previous_level >= $level) {
                    $node = $node->parentNode;
                    $previous_level--;
                }

                $item = $doc->createElement('item');
                $node = $node->appendChild($item);
                $content = $doc->createElement('content');
                $node = $item->appendChild($content);
                $name = $node->appendChild($doc->createElement('name', $name));
                $filepath = $node->appendChild($doc->createElement('file_path', $filepath));
                $previous_level = $level+1;
            }
            oci_free_statement($stid);
        }
        catch (Exception $e)
        {
            echo "Caught exception: ",  $e->getMessage(), "\n";
        }
        oci_close($conn);

        header('Content-type: application/xml');      
            echo $doc->saveXML();

i suppose this page could be re-written to output a treeview instead of xml here:

header('Content-type: application/xml');      
            echo $doc->saveXML();

I would say that unless the XML is needed elsewhere in the application/site that the XML is an unnecessary step since the goal is to render HTML. If you still need to generate the data in a format that consumable by other scripts, you might consider JSON as an alternative since it is already native to JavaScript and much less verbose.

Yes - I would change your PHP script that generates the XML to simply generate HTML instead, and output that to the page.

how would I convert the page to output JSON?

I see that jstree is a pretty good tree solution. but in each case it wants to read an actual file (.xml. .js, html, etc.) , not output and translate it.

I guess the problem here is I do not have a real clue as to how to create the tree unless I have an actual file to read, like what JSTREE wants.

I'm confused again.

Lets say you want a tree view on index.php. In index.php, you would generate the HTML for the tree, and then call the javascript. The javascript runs on the client side. It formats and binds all of the events for the tree. The tree doesn't "read" any file. It simply looks into the HTML structure and finds the HTML that you have outputted and uses that for the tree.

Basically -

You read data from your database. You translate the data structure into the tree view HTML and output that to the page. Then using javascript, you call the plugin and provide the appropriate DOM selector and that's it.

I don't get what you mean, I guess.

alien109 - please give me a simple example of what you are stating. then I can see what you are saying and have a better idea. Sometimes actual code says more than words.

I had to do more research to find an example but when I did it was close to what was provided, so I am giving the points.