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Using and processing XML from multiple sources

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Join Date: Sep 2008

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bar7b

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Using and processing XML from multiple sources

Mar 2nd, 2009

Im trying to build a site that gets info, lets say product prices, from different xml sources that have a different structure. Then it displays all the prices sorted..
My first guess is to import all the data from the different XMLs to a mysql db after the sorting of the XMLs, and then display it on the site. However the data will be updating frequently so im looking for a different aproach..
Any thoughts?
Tools i can use?

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Join Date: Aug 2008

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langsor

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Re: Using and processing XML from multiple sources

Mar 3rd, 2009

I made a similar page that gathered prices from different book vendors based on ISBN-AEN numbers. I created a vendor-specific RegEx to retrieve the price values after looking up the book page via GET-query on the address bar. This approach required PERL (at the time), now I would use PHP...and simply build the results page on-the-fly before sending it off from the server to the client-browser.

So if I had to do the same thing but gathering the price values from XML I would probably still grab the latest values on-the-fly and definitely use PHP's built in XML parsing functions to make this pretty easy.

1. Client Request for product
2. PHP grab XML and extract values from same
3. Build results page & publish to client

Hope this helps.

Last edited by langsor; Mar 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 am.

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Join Date: Sep 2008

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bar7b

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Re: Using and processing XML from multiple sources

Mar 3rd, 2009

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Originally Posted by langsor

I made a similar page that gathered prices from different book vendors based on ISBN-AEN numbers. I created a vendor-specific RegEx to retrieve the price values after looking up the book page via GET-query on the address bar. This approach required PERL (at the time), now I would use PHP...and simply build the results page on-the-fly before sending it off from the server to the client-browser.

So if I had to do the same thing but gathering the price values from XML I would probably still grab the latest values on-the-fly and definitely use PHP's built in XML parsing functions to make this pretty easy.

1. Client Request for product
2. PHP grab XML and extract values from same
3. Build results page & publish to client

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your help..
I initially thought about going this way but I'm pretty sure it would be to slow to function well..
I'm using quite a few xmls so grabbing each one of them realtime on page load sounds a bit tedious and really not efficient server wise.
How did it work for you with the ISBN-AEN numbers? acceptable loading times?