PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser - Link element in RSS

Question

I just started using PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser (http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/) and have some problems parsing XML.

I can perfectly parse all the links from HTML documents, but parsing links from RSS feeds (XML format) doesn't work. For example, I want to parse all the links from http://www.bing.com/search?q=ipod&count=50&first=0&format=rss so I use this code:

$content = file_get_html('http://www.bing.com/search?q=ipod&count=50&first=0&format=rss');

foreach($content->find('item') as $entry)
{
$item['title']     = $entry->find('title', 0)->plaintext;
$item['description']    = $entry->find('description', 0)->plaintext;
$item['link'] = $entry->find('link', 0)->plaintext;
$parsed_results_array[] = $item;
}

print_r($parsed_results_array);

The script parses title and description but link element is empty. Any ideas? My guess is that "link" is reserved word or something, so how do I get the parser to work?

Answer 1

I suggest you use the right tool for this job. Use SimpleXML: Plus, its built-in :)

$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://www.bing.com/search?q=ipod&count=50&first=0&format=rss');
$parsed_results_array = array();
foreach($xml as $entry) {
    foreach($entry->item as $item) {
        // $parsed_results_array[] = json_decode(json_encode($item), true);
        $items['title'] = (string) $item->title;
        $items['description'] = (string) $item->description;
        $items['link'] = (string) $item->link;
        $parsed_results_array[] = $items;
    }
}

echo '<pre>';
print_r($parsed_results_array);

Should yield something like:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [title] => Apple - iPod
            [description] => Learn about iPod, Apple TV, and more. Download iTunes for free and purchase iTunes Gift Cards. Check out the most popular TV shows, movies, and music.
            [link] => http://www.apple.com/ipod/
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [title] => iPod - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
            [description] => The iPod is a line of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first line was released on October 23, 2001, about 8½ months after ...
            [link] => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod
        )