Php & xml

whats are they like to work with?

[ppg]

The more I read here about PHP the more interested I become.

I've got a new project to start and I'm thinking of building it with PHP with an XML based catalogue, partly to learn a bit more about both.

How have you found the integration? I'm not going to have an awful lot of time to pick it up (after hours project) so I'm curious as to how steep the learning curve is. I have a fair idea of the basics of XML.

thanks

[ppg]

also, I'd be interested to know what kind of uses people have have put xml to on their PHP driven sites - are there advantages from a point of view of scalability and site management?

[Nick_W]

I've not tried it but am in the process of evaluating it for a project. Here is the use I think I'll get out of it.

If all of my 'articles' are strored as xml using the 'docbook' dtd then I can use xslt to either display them as html for the site. Or.. as text for email purposes.

I can see also uses for handheld devices.

A little decision making logic to choose the xslt sheet and away you go!

Nick

[lorax]

Hey ppg,
I'm thinking about the combination of PHP and XHTML for a site I'm working on now.

The advantages I believe (believe being the operative word) are lighter pages, easier to read and more relative information for the spiders to crawl combined with dynamic page creation.

I could be totally out to lunch here so I have a bit more research to do.

[Nick_W]

Well, if you choose to go the full whack with xhtml 1.1 and css only layout you can get your pages real light indeed.

My new business site weighs in at under 5k and uses xhtml 1.1 and php. Okay, it's light on images as I'm not much of an artist but it looks pretty reasonalble and the fact it loads in under a second on 56k modem is largely due to the spec.

Nick

[ppg]

Hi Lorax, yes, I'm thinking about XHTML too.

Thats sounds like it could be really useful Nick. its nice to hear an example of a real world use.

[Marcia]

>decision making logic to choose the xslt sheet

Any hints on what xslt is and how it's used?

[lorax]

Hi ppg,
Well, since my last post here I've very nearly finished converting my project web site over to XHTML. The template validates for XHTML just fine. A few sticking points to handle (something funky going on with a table cell) but for the most part it was easy. Of course now I have make sure it validates for CSS2.

So - dig in!

[Nick_W]

Any hints on what xslt is and how it's used?

eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations.

Here ya go: [w3.org ]

Nick

[ppg]

Handy link Nick, thanks. Theres some interesting stuff on Sablotron there too, which looks like its the PHP way of doing things with XML and XSLT.

Any idea how well XSLT is supported with hosting companies? One of the main reasons I'm thinking of learning to do XML stuff with PHP is that so many hosting companies seem to support PHP.

[Nick_W]

Not sure, I know mine supports some xml related stuff but not Sablotron. Guess you gotta look around and ask a few questions...

Nick

[ppg]

ok. Thanks Nick, you've been a big help :)