PHP: output XML data in a table

Question

Can someone please help me figure out how to output the below XML contents in a HTML table:

XML:

       <student>
        <name>John</name>
        <map>
        <competency>
          <level>5</level>
          <skill name="Maths"> 
             <skillinfo> "some value" </skillinfo>
          </skill>
        <competency>
      <competency>
          <level>4</level>
          <skill name="Science"> 
             <skillinfo> "some value" </skillinfo>
          </skill>
        <competency>
      <competency>
          <level>5</level>
          <skill name="Technology"> 
             <skillinfo> "some value" </skillinfo>
          </skill>
        <competency>
        </map>
    <team name ="Alpha">
    </team>
        </student>
<student>
        <name>James</name>
        <map>
        <competency>
          <level>3</level>
          <skill name="Maths"> 
             <skillinfo> "some value" </skillinfo>
          </skill>
        <competency>
      <competency>
          <level>1</level>
          <skill name="Science"> 
             <skillinfo> "some value" </skillinfo>
          </skill>
        <competency>
        </map>
    <team name ="Alpha">
    </team>
        </student>

What I need is to output student information for team named 'Alpha' in a table.

The output should have student name, skill name and level score. So in the above example, I want to first check whether the student belongs to Team Alpha, and if so output their 'name' (John) and 'level' (5) and 'skill' (technology).

The script will also check if John has the particular skill before outputting the 'level' score for that skill. If this 'skill' does not exist (meaning it is not in the XML file) I want to leave the contents for 'level' in the table blank.

So far I'm able to find the team name using xpath query and then get each competency in a for loop. Then I'm able to find the skill name by using the getAttribute('name') which I then use to check whether that particular skill exists. But what I'm not able to figure out in an efficient manner is how to output the score attached to that skill if that particular skill exists.

Desired Output:

Student Name    Maths    Technology    Science
John              5          5           4
James             3                      1

Hope this makes sense. Thank you in advance.

UPDATE: I managed to figure out how to do this but I'm not able to output the table properly. Problem with the below output is that when a skill is not found, the table shifts the value to the left.

So the output will look like this

Student Name    Maths    Technology    Science
John              5          5           4
James             3          1

Rather it should be:

Student Name    Maths    Technology    Science
John              5          5           4
James             3                      1

CODE:

   function displayResult() {       
        $data = getXML($URL);         
        $dom = new DOMDocument;
        $dom->loadXML($data);
        $xpath = new DomXpath($dom);
        echo"<table class='table table-striped table-hover' text-center>
            <thead>
            <tr>
              <th>Student Name</th>
              <th>Maths</th>
              <th>Technology</th>
              <th>Science</th>                                                                    
              </tr>
          </thead>
          <tbody>"; 
        echo"<tr>";                                 
  foreach($xpath->query('//student') as $node)  {   
                $getname = ($node->getELementsByTagName('Name'));
                $StudentName = $getname[0]->nodeValue;          
                echo"<td>$StudentName</td>";                                                                                
                foreach($node-> getELementsByTagName('competency') as $scoreNode){              
                    $getskill = $scoreNode -> getELementsByTagName('skill');
                    $sk = $getskill[0]->getAttribute('name');       
                    if ($sk== 'Maths') {
                        foreach($scoreNode->childNodes as $compNode)                            
                            if ($compNode->tagName == 'level') {
                            echo"<td>$compNode->nodeValue</td>";
                            }                                               
                    }
                    if ($sk== 'Science') {
                        foreach($scoreNode->childNodes as $compNode)                            
                            if ($compNode->tagName == 'level') {
                            echo"<td>$compNode->nodeValue</td>";
                            }                                               
                    }                   

                    if ($sk== 'Technology') {
                        foreach($scoreNode->childNodes as $compNode)                            
                            if ($compNode->tagName == 'level') {
                            echo"<td>$compNode->nodeValue</td>";
                            }                                               
                    }                       

            }                               
                echo " </tr>";  
        }
        echo "</tbody>
        </table>";
    }

Its HTML table. I've updated the question with desired output. — loneknight
– loneknight, Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 15:11
Post fuller XML with root as right now it is truncated (e.g., no James). Also, look into XSLT to transform XML to HTML which PHP can run. Come back with any issues in your attempt. — Parfait
– Parfait, Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 15:17
thanks I've now updated the XML structure. I will check out XSLT soon. — loneknight
– loneknight, Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 22:14
Where is your root tag? Also, XML is not well-formed as <competency> tags do not close. — Parfait
– Parfait, Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:39

Parfait · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-15 17:11:17Z

1

Simply use XSLT, the special-purpose language designed to transform XML including into HTML and avoid building XML with strings and loops in PHP. In fact, you do not even need PHP as you can simply reference the stylesheet in XML. However, below also shows how to process in PHP:

XSLT (save as .xsl file; XSLT Fiddle Demo)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
  <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes" />

  <xsl:template match="/*">
    <html>
      <head>
        <title>Student Table</title>
      </head>
      <body>
          <table class='table table-striped table-hover'>
            <thead>
              <tr>
                <th>Student Name</th>
                <th>Maths</th>
                <th>Technology</th>
                <th>Science</th>
              </tr>
            </thead>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="student"/>
          </table>
      </body>          
    </html>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="student">
      <tr>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="name"/></td>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="map/competency[skill/@name='Maths']/level"/></td>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="map/competency[skill/@name='Technology']/level"/></td>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="map/competency[skill/@name='Science']/level"/></td>
      </tr>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Stylesheet XML (inline reference, assumed in same directory as source)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="xslt_script.xsl"?>

PHP (enable php_xsl extension in .ini file)

# LOAD XML AND XSL FILES
$xml = new DOMDocument;
$xml->load('/path/to/input.xml');

$xsl = new DOMDocument;
$xsl->load('/path/to/xslt_script.xsl');

// CONFIGURE TRANSFORMER
$proc = new XSLTProcessor;
$proc->importStyleSheet($xsl);

// RUN TRANSFORMATION
$newXML = new DOMDocument;
$newXML = $proc->transformToXML($xml);

// OUTPUT HTML TABLE
header("Content-Type: text/html");
echo $newXML;

// SAVE NEW DOM TREE TO FILE
file_put_contents('/path/to/output.html', $newXML);

answered Jun 15, 2018 at 17:11

Parfait

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2 Comments

loneknight Over a year ago

Thanks for your response Parfait. I ended up doing this in simplexml using php. When time permits I will try XSLT. Will mark your response as the answer even though I'm yet to try it.

Parfait Over a year ago

Understood. But do note, with XSLT you avoid foreach loops and if logic. Plus you do not need PHP to run this as XSLT is portable and like SQL can be run in other languages. And your browser can run it with stylesheet applied. And to be fair, you should post your answer and accept it later on.

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