Add and edit XML with PHP

[Marjoth]

Hi there!

Im currently working on a script which allows me to enter new posts in a XML-file.

The XML ("config.xml") is read by a flash application to show videos. The XML-template is as follow, and is entered for each new movie I want to publish:

      <item>
         <title>$title</title> // from form ($_POST)
         <description><![CDATA[$description]]></description> // short description of movie
         <url>$URL</url> // URL to the moviefile (FLV)
         <thumb>$thumb_url</thumb> // URL to thumbnail
      </item>

I've created a short PHP-script which allows me to enter this details through a form. On the top and the bottom of the file there's a tag <movie> and </movie>, and using the fgets()-function with a "while", the script is searching for the first <movie>-line and place the new entery right below it.

The source code can be found here: http://norskwebforum.no/pastebin/10961 (text in norwegian, but I think you'll understand the point).

Now, I really want to add the functionality to edit and delete posts, but I don't know how to do this. Maybe I can generate the XML with a database, but I started with PHP two weeks ago, so I'm still pretty n00b at this. I've read about SimpleXML in PHP5 as a easier way of doing this, but at this point this is a little too complicated to understand...

Summary: The point is to add, edit and delete items from the XML-file within a graphical interface.

So any help would've been much appriciated!

[Stevish]

I would think you could use the same sort of while loop to get each of the items.

$i = 1;
$intag = false
while(whatever...) {
   if($line == "<item>") {
      $intag = true;
      $item_array[$i] = '';
      continue;
   }
   if($line == "</item>") {
      $intag = false;
      $i++;
      continue;
   }
   if($intag) {
      $item_array[$i] .= $line . "\n";
   }
}

return $item_array; 

That would give you an array containing all the items, which is pulled directly from the file. Then to delete or edit them, you would use a function that finds the nth instance of <item>...</item> where n is the key from the array.

It's not the cleanest way of doing it, but at least it doesn't require the information to be stored in the file AND a database. All the work is done right from the file.