Calling all XML geeks

[annathepiper]

Okay, so I'm playing around with overhauling my site, and part of my overall goal here is to try to teach myself some XML--for purposes of trying to beef up my resume, of course, when I have to start looking for jobs again. And I'm looking for ways that I can put XML into use on this new and improved version of my site.

Here's the sitch--I have a known set of navigation links I want to display in different ways on my pages. For example, I may display them as a sidebar, or I may display them in a simpler form at the bottom of a page. But no matter how I display them, they should always have the same set of data, i.e., for each link, there should be a URL and a piece of text displayed for it. As near as I can tell this would be an ideal simple way to use XML, but a possible complication is that I use quite a bit of PHP on my site as well, and all of my various main files are PHP files.

So in short, what I want to do is something like this:

• Have a file foo.php
  
• In various places in this file, bar.xml is pulled in, most likely via the PHP include() function
  
• Depending on where in the file I am, I need to pull bar.xml through one of a set of possible xslt stylesheets to spit out the proper HTML
  
• The final version of foo.php is tossed out to the user through the web server
  

Is this doable? Tips and tricks appreciated!

Comments

[spunbutterfly.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible in just php and css.

But I don't really know xml too well. I can ask Derrick if no one else does on your list (which I highly doubt).

I am fairly certain though, almost anything is possible. XD

[annathepiper]

Ah, but the point is, I think I can do it more cleanly in XML. Also, I've already played a lot with PHP, and so I want to try an XML solution first--as a learning experience. :) But I don't know the mechanics of how it all fits together yet. Thanks for chiming in!

[annathepiper]

Well, I'm pretty comfy with the whole CSS and PHP and HTML concept--but the whole idea of playing with XML is the major point here, for the learning experience. :) I just need to learn how it all fits together.

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

PHP does simple XML stuff reasonably well but falls down hard on anything complex.

It's one of the very few areas that PHP has disappointed me. I was used to using the DOM for XML when I was progamming ASP pages (man... that's a geek sentence for sure). Alas, unless I've just missed something somewhere PHP doesn't do the DOM thang worth a hoot.

I understand that PHP 5.x does it at least somewhat better but my hosting service doesn't run 5 and I'm just not up to the task.

If you find the secret juju, please, please, please share it with me.

HH

[annathepiper]

Hrmm. HrMRmm. As I posted yesterday I'm about to upgrade the murkworks.net servers to the latest stable release of Debian, so I think we'll be getting a newer install of PHP, but I don't think that'll get us PHP 5 yet. I checked the packages on the new stable distribution, they're still on a 4.3.10 package, it looks like. So's the unstable distribution, for that matter. So I'm not sure when we're going to get PHP 5 on the Murknet--I'd have to compile it by hand and that scares me. ;) (Not that I can't compile it by hand, I just hate to do it since with a package system, I keep having to remember what I've installed from scratch and what I put in via apt-get. Foo.)

Anyway, thanks for your input! If I figure out anything cool, I shall be sure to geek about it here. Mostly at this stage, I want to do at least some playing with XML just to say that I have. It doesn't have to be too terribly complicated.