unable to parse xml data with AJAX + Wordpress

Question

Ok, I am officially stumped. I have been trying to find why my calls for specific items in a PubMed xml data file are not working... I can execute this one with my current coding:

$test = (string)$id_json->PubmedArticle->MedlineCitation->PMID;

but if I try to get a variable that is in a deeper array, it does not return a value. I have even tested with console.log(data) and I get my PMID returning but not my other, deeper values in the XML file. For example;

$test = (string)$id_json->PubmedArticle->MedlineCitation->Article->Journal->ISSN;

returns nothing for data in console.log(data)

Here is my function in wordpress:

function get_abstract(){
$id = $_POST['abstractid'];

$pubmed_api_call = 'https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?db=pubmed&retmode=xml&rettype=abstract&id='.$id;

$id_wpget = wp_remote_get($pubmed_api_call, array('timeout' => 20));
if( is_wp_error( $id_wpget ) ) {
    echo "Error Contacting PubMed, please refresh page and try again";
 die();
}
$id_xml = wp_remote_retrieve_body($id_wpget);
$id_json = simplexml_load_string($id_xml);
$test = (string)$id_json->PubmedArticle->MedlineCitation->Article->Journal->ISSN;
if($test === ""){
echo "NOTHING";
die();
}

echo $test;
die();
}

and here is my javascript AJAX call:

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

  jQuery('.reference_header').click(function(e) {
    jQuery(this).find("i").toggleClass("arrow-down arrow-up");
    jQuery(this).nextUntil('.reference_header').slideToggle('fast');
    var abstractid = jQuery(this).data("id");
    e.preventDefault();
        jQuery.ajax({
            url: get_abstract.ajaxurl,
            type: 'POST',
            dataType: 'json',
            data: {
        abstractid: jQuery(this).data("id"),
        action: 'get_abstract'
        },
            success : function(data){
                    jQuery('.'+abstractid).html("TESTING: "+data);
                    console.log(data);
                }

        });
  });

});

I cannot find out why it doesnt work... any help is greatly appreciated.

You may want to convert the XML string to an array and parse: [link]stackoverflow.com/questions/6578832/… — Jamie_D
– Jamie_D, Commented Oct 30, 2018 at 14:16
Just to clarify: initially you didn't get your 'deeper' request's data, because that was a mixed object (object + array(s), and not only object? That's why the serialized string object was unable to retrieve that without encoding to json? (if you still remember this :) Cheers — Viktor Borítás
– Viktor Borítás, Commented Mar 28, 2021 at 20:08

NRav · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-30 14:26:11Z

1

So I figured out the solution to the issue... you need to pass the string text as a json object to AJAX for it to read properly...

working code:

PHP:

echo json_encode(array("result" => "$test"));
die();

AJAX:

        success : function(data){
                jQuery('.'+abstractid).html("TESTING: "+data.result);
                console.log(data.result);
            }

answered Oct 30, 2018 at 14:26

NRav

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