I'm using simpleXML to parse this xml file. It's a feed I'm using to access the YouTube API. I want to embed the most recent video in an object and display the next four thumbnails.
So I'm using simplexml_load_file
on this, going using a foreach
loop to access the values in each feed.
I can access the values no problem, but I run into the problem that it stores each video in a separate SimpleXMLElement Object
. I don't have any control over which object I'm accessing as they are not stored in an array. So I can't get, say, $thumb[4]
or $entry[4]->thumb
.
I tried to use SimpleXMLIterator
, but for whatever reason, any values that have the same beginning render as blank. For example, the video could have eleven variations of:
And these would each render as [1]=""
, [2]=""
, [3]=""
, etc.
I'll happily provide some more information to anyone who can help!
Edit
Here is the print_r of my results. This is done on a single variable to give you an idea of the structure issue I'm facing. The entire print_r($entry) would give variables for each node in the XML file.
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] => 159
)
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] => 44
)
Also, the print_r is simply inside the PHP block for testing. I'm actually looking to access the variables within echoes in the HTML.
You ran into the problem of namespaces and SimpleXML. The feed starts with
<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:media='http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:gd='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005' xmlns:yt='http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007'>
The xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
sets the default namespace to http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom
. I.e. its child elements are not really id
, updated
, category
but http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom:id
, http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom:updated
and so on...
So you can't access the the id element via $feed->id
, you need the method SimpleXMLELement::children(). It lets you specify the namespace of the child elements you want to retrieve.
For example,
$feed = simplexml_load_file('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?author=ofcoursegolf&max-results=5&prettyprint=true');
$children = $feed->children('http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
echo $children->updated;
Currently prints 2010-02-06T05:23:33.858Z
.
To get the id of the first entry element you can use echo $children->entry[0]->id;
.
But then you'll hit the <media:group>
element and its children <media:category
, <media:player>
and so on..., which are in the xmlns:media='http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/'
namespace.
$feed = simplexml_load_file('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?author=ofcoursegolf&max-results=5&prettyprint=true');
$group = $feed->children('http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom')
->entry[0]
->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/')
->group
->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/')
;
echo $group->player->attributes()->url, "\n";
foreach( $group->thumbnail as $thumb) {
echo 'thumb: ', $thumb->attributes()->url, "\n";
}
(Currently) prints
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikACkCpJ-js&feature=youtube_gdata
thumb: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ikACkCpJ-js/2.jpg
thumb: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ikACkCpJ-js/1.jpg
thumb: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ikACkCpJ-js/3.jpg
thumb: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ikACkCpJ-js/0.jpg
Edit: I'd probably do that within the browser with a lot more JavaScript, but here's a (simple, ugly) example app.
<?php
//define('TESTENV' , true);
function getFeed($author) {
// <-- add caching here if needed -->
if ( !defined('TESTENV') ) {
$url = sprintf('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?author=%s&max-results=5',
urlencode($author)
);
}
else {
$url = 'feed.xml';
}
return simplexml_load_file($url);
}
$feed = getFeed('jonlajoie');
if ( !isset($_GET['id']) ) {
$selected = '';
}
else {
$selected = $_GET['id'];
printf ('
<object width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/%s"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always">
</param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/%s" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>
</object>',
htmlspcialchars($selected), htmlspcialchars($selected)
);
}
$item = 0;
foreach( $feed->children('http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom')->entry as $entry ) {
$entryElements = $entry->children('http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$groupElements = $entry
->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/')
->group
->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/')
;
if ( !preg_match('!^http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/([^/]+)!', $entryElements->id, $m) ) {
// google can choose whatever id they want. But this is only a simple example....
die('unexpected id: '.htmlspecialchars($entryElements->id));
}
$id = $m[1];
if ( $selected!==$id ) {
printf('<a href="?id=%s"><img src="%s" /></a>',
urlencode($id),
$groupElements->thumbnail[0]->attributes()->url
);
}
}
Edit 2: "And when I click the thumbnails, I'll use jQuery to load the video in the main space. Seems like I'll need precise access to node[#], right?"
If you're already using JavaScript/jQuery your PHP script (if needed at all) could simply return a (JSON encoded) array of all the data for all the video and your jQuery script could figure out what to do with the data.
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadXML(file_get_contents('http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?author=ofcoursegolf&max-results=5&prettyprint=true'));
$xpd = new DOMXPath($doc);
$xpd->registerNamespace('atom', "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom");
false&&$node = new DOMElement();//this is for my IDE to have intellysense
$result = $xpd->query('//atom:feed/atom:entry[1]/media:group/media:thumbnail');
foreach($result as $node){
echo $node->getAttribute('url').'<br />';
}
echo "more results <br />";
$result = $xpd->query('//atom:feed/atom:entry[1]/media:group/media:thumbnail[1]');
foreach($result as $node){
echo $node->getAttribute('url').'<br />';
}
Try $sxml->entry[4]->thumb
or something to that regard.
AKA, to access the first entries ID, you would go $sxml->entry[4]->id
Basically $sxml->entry
is an array of SimpleXMLElement Object
s. When you foreach them, you are going through each object and assigning it to $entry
, so that $entry = $sxml->entry[0]
and upwards.
You can go like this:
print_r($sxml);
to see the ENTIRE structure. And that will tell you what you need to use to access it.
In the end, I did two foreach loops, one running through an XML feed showing the most recent one entry. Then, I echoed out the object around this to play the vide.
In the other, I ran through the most recent four entries, returning list elements for a list of thumbnails.
Now, when I click on a thumbnail video, javascript handles passing the parameters to the main entry. Now, how to reload that main object upon receiving the parameters, I'm open to ideas.