cURL returning XML or JSON

Question

I've got a form say here - http://example.com/palreg.php

Once people register I'll be sending them an email with the link that will allow them to edit their details (I know it's a crazy way of doing things, but I am working on someone else's code so don't mind) for instance the url as such http://example.com/palreg.php?paliD=1234, and when they go to that page the form will be populated with their information so that they can make changes.

Now the problem is that the DB is in a different site and the information has to be passed to that site to perform a select action, to do so I use cURL to send the information like so

$url = "http://example2.com/processXML.php";
$xmlStr will be like this

<table>tab_name</table>
<action>select</action>
<palid>1234</palid>

$ch=curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'xmlstr='.$xmlStr);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$data = curl_exec($ch);

On the other end (http://example2.com/processXML.php) I convert the xml to an array and perform the query to select pal information based on the id sent.

The real question now is how do I send the retrieved pal information (as xml or json or array) back so that i can populate the form with the returned data.

Also can I do a return $dataArray; in processXML.php and be able to grab it?

OK to make things a bit clearer, what I do in processXML.php is retrieve the result set and do this

print json_encode($resultArray);

not should I print or return

Thank you, and do let me know if things aren't clear.

Answer 1

just encode it as you want, and echo it to the page. your $data= will contain the echoed contents. Personal preference has been to use JSON since it's so easy to throw around. as in

//Bunch of DB stuff..
$row=mysql_fetch_however_you_handle_it();
echo json_encode($row);


//on your receiving end, that just did the cURL send,
$row=json_decode($data,true);//decode the JSON straight into an array...