I've googled this and can only find information on doing this with AS3 - I am using PHP, jQuery and HTML. Is this at all feasable using these technologies and if so... how?
3 Answers
Let say you have the following XML file (songs.xml)
<songs>
<song>
<name>I left my heart on Europa</name>
<id>1</id>
</song>
<song>
<name>Oh Ganymede</name>
<id>2</id>
</song>
<song>
<name>Kallichore</name>
<id>3</id>
</song>
</songs>
With the following PHP code you can generate JSON with the data only from XML file (let's name it xml.php):
<?php
// load the XML file
$songs = simplexml_load_file('songs.xml');
// get all song elements as an array
$options = iterator_to_array($songs->song, false);
// output json
echo json_encode($options);
Now you just need to do a ajax request with jQuery:
$.getJSON("xml.php",function(j){
var $option = $("#option");
$option.empty();
$.each(j, function () {
$option.append($('<option></option>').attr("value", this.id).text(this.name));
});
});
to populate an html code like this:
<select name="x" id="option"></select>
jquery is not tested, but if you already worked with it, you can fix any errors :)
2 Comments
hakre
I edited the answer as it had some flaws with the JSON encoding. PHP comes with everything needed here, it's also much easier to achieve.
halfer
This is an excellent answer, but please consider helping users rather than doing their work for them. An important differentiator of SO is the encouragement of self-sufficiency, which will serve OPs much better in the long run. Nevertheless, +1.
You have to import the xml and parse it, this will give you an object or multidimensional array which you can loop through and thus creating the elements for the dropdown.
Comments
I dont see why not? You want to fill dropbox with elements from XML? By dropdown box you probably mean select option HTML element. There are bunch of XML parsers in PHP like SimpleXML end when you fetch elements just loop in php and set option values.
Pure PHP solution (same XML as Sacx):
<?php
$songs = simplexml_load_file('songs.xml');
echo "<select id='SELsongs'>";
foreach($songs as $song)
{
echo "<option value='".$song->id."'>".$song->name."</option>";
}
echo "</select>";
?>
3 Comments
Steve_M
Thank you - that will work a treat. Will get right to it. Thanks.
Bojan Kovacevic
Sack-s solution is nice,and probably works but i dont know if you realy need to use jquery for this? yes if you will use special type of dropbox made in javascript. For simple select option PHP solution is enough and i think making json string and parsing it is redundant.
Steve_M
I dont NEED to use jquery at all, everything is done on page load and the content of the dropdowns arent dynamic in the slightest. So yes, just the simple PHP simplexml parser and loop will work.
SimpleXML- web-search that), and convert it into a JSON string (json_encode), then read it using one of the AJAX ops in jQuery. Either create the menu in PHP and return it as an HTML string in your JSON, or return an array in your JSON and assemble the menu in JavaScript. I more often do the former, but circumstances vary.