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