NYCPHP Meetup

[Jon Baer]

If im not mistaken in *theory* this is exactly the type of work that  
XQuery was made for ...

Your query would look something similar to:

{
      for $ad in doc("ads.xml")//ad
      order by $ad/category
      return $ad/title
}

Looks beautiful and much cleaner eh?  The problem is no library  
support whatsoever on the PHP side, all implementations have been  
Java based ...

There is a preliminary library here:
http://phpxmlclasses.sourceforge.net/show_doc.php? 
class=class_xquery_lite.html

But no sorting support as of yet and Im not sure if those libraries  
are even in active development.  I also do not beleive Simple XML has  
this capability, only simple Xpath.

- Jon

On Apr 11, 2006, at 2:34 PM, Peter Sawczynec wrote:

> I believe, XSL Transformations (XSLT) is a correct method for  
> achieving your
> end, i.e. use XSL to format and sort the XML.
> PHP 4.1+ XSLT library will let you do roughly so...
>
> $xsltHnd = xslt_create();
> xslt_set_base($xsltHnd,'');
> $html =  xslt_process($xsltHnd, 'my_listings.xml',
> 'my_listings_format.xsl');
> echo $html;
>
>
> Above, the XML param is your XML file. The XSL file contains a  
> mixture of
> XHTML, CSS and XSL.
> The XSL allows you to sort and format XML quite effectively.
>
> Your XSL file will contain code like the following snippets:
>
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
> xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
> <xsl:output method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
>
> <xsl:template match="/ads">
>   <xsl:apply-templates select="ad">
>     <xsl:sort select="category"/>
>   </xsl:apply-templates>
> </xsl:template>
>
>
> <xsl:template match="ad">
> <xsl:choose>
> 	<xsl:when test="url[.!='']">	
> 		<td align="left" height="28" valign="top">
> 		<xsl:element name="a">
> 			<xsl:attribute name="href"><xsl:value-of
> select="@url"/></xsl:attribute>
> 				<xsl:element name="img">
> 					<xsl:attribute
> name="src">images/ads/<xsl:text></xsl:text><xsl:value-of
> select="title"/></xsl:attribute>
> 					<xsl:attribute
> name="border">0</xsl:attribute>
> 				</xsl:element>
> 		</xsl:element>
> 		</td>
> 	</xsl:when>
> 	<xsl:otherwise>
> 		<td align="left" height="28" valign="top">
> 		<img src="../images/spacer.gif" />
> 		</td>
> 	</xsl:otherwise>
> </xsl:choose>
> </xsl:template>
>
>
> </xsl:stylesheet>
>
>
> Above shows very roughly the technique for using XSL to sort XML  
> and then
> push the XML data into some XHTML to create a hyperlinked thumbnail  
> image
> for display in the browser.
>
> Now that is just to give you an idea.
>
> This technique, of course, has a learning curve. You need to look  
> up PHP
> XML/XSLT tutorials and samples on the web and get familiar with XSL in
> general. Particularly you need to grasp XSL templates and how to  
> apply to
> XML data.
>
> Again, this is just one avenue but once you got it, you can apply this
> approach on many tasks with few changes.
>
> Otherwise, look at PHP array sort techniques at:
> http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> Peter Sawczynec,
> Technology Director
> PSWebcode
> _Design & Interface
> _Ecommerce
> _Database Management
> ps at pswebcode.com
> 718.796.1951
> www.pswebcode.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk- 
> bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On
> Behalf Of Tim Boyden
> Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 1:29 PM
> To: talk at lists.nyphp.org
> Subject: [nycphp-talk] PHP4 Array/XML sorting question
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I am working on a web page that lists some ads stored in an XML  
> file and I'm
> having trouble with figuring out how to sort the listings by their
> "category" element. Currently I pull the "ad" elements from the XML  
> into an
> array and print out the HTML list of ads in a non-sorted manner.  
> I'd like it
> to print out with a header for the category followed by a list of  
> ads in
> that category. I'm not sure how to code it though. Any help would be
> appreciated. Below is a snippet from the XML file:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
> <ads>
> <ad>
>     <franchise>test</franchise>
>     <category>Food</category>
>     <title>Test 1</title>
>     <url>testpage1.pdf</url>
> </ad>
> <ad>
>     <franchise>test</franchise>
>     <category>Home Improvement</category>
>     <title>Test 2</title>
>     <url>testpage2.pdf</url>
> </ad>
> <ad>
>     <franchise>test</franchise>
>     <category>Services</category>
>     <title>Test 3</title>
>     <url>testpage3.pdf</url>
> </ad>
> </ads>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tim Boyden
>
> ---------------------------
> Timothy Boyden
> Network Administrator
> tboyden at supercoups.com
>
> SuperCoupsR | 350 Revolutionary Drive | E. Taunton, MA 02718
> 508-977-2034  | www.supercoups.com
> ---------------------------
> Local Coupons. Super Savings.R
>
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