Need to parse XML server/form response

I want to hire someone to do this but don't know what to ask for. Any tips?

[brizad]

Hi,
I have a form on my site that gathers info and sends it to an affiliate network. On submit it used to redirect to my thank you page which allowed me to track conversions. Now they've changed it so it won't redirect to my thank you page and I can't track conversions.

They have another version of the form I could use that would supposedly allow me to track conversions by sending all the data in a server response and then I could redirect to the affiliate network.

When I ask for info on how to do this they just tell me I need to "parse the XML response." Obviously I don't know how to do that. If it's something easy that I could figure out in an hour or two I'd do it, but beyond that I'll just hire someone but I don't even know what I need to ask for. Do I just say I need to "parse an XML response" or do I need to say something else? Or if there's an easy way to do this myself can anyone point me in the right direction?

Here's an example of the server response:

<response>
<sm>OK</sm>
<lid>235030</lid>
<ldaid>001</ldaid>
<amt>66.55</amt >
<buyer>
<redir>http://www.example.com/</redir>
</buyer>
<sid>xb2343sd</sid>
<cid>jj3432rx</cid>
<tid>payday loan</tid>
<mid>pdsrch01</mid>
</response>

Thanks for any help or advice!

[cmarshall]

Well, you need to have a clear spec of what you will get as a result.

If you give that as the input, and an example of the desired output, then it is very clear, and you should be able to hire someone to do it in an hour.

I recommend not using XSLT, if the responses are that small and are very consistent. Instead, just use a standard XML parser and pluck the data out that you need.