PHP XML how to output nice format

Question

Here are the codes:

$doc = new DomDocument('1.0'); // create root node $root = $doc->createElement('root'); $root = $doc->appendChild($root); $signed_values = array('a' => 'eee', 'b' => 'sd', 'c' => 'df'); // process one row at a time foreach ($signed_values as $key => $val) {     // add node for each row     $occ = $doc->createElement('error');     $occ = $root->appendChild($occ);     // add a child node for each field     foreach ($signed_values as $fieldname => $fieldvalue) {         $child = $doc->createElement($fieldname);         $child = $occ->appendChild($child);         $value = $doc->createTextNode($fieldvalue);         $value = $child->appendChild($value);     } } // get completed xml document $xml_string = $doc->saveXML() ; echo $xml_string; 

If I print it in the browser I don't get nice XML structure like

<xml> \n tab <child> etc. 

I just get

<xml><child>ee</child></xml> 

And I want to be utf-8 How is this all possible to do?

Answer 1

You can try to do this:

... // get completed xml document $doc->preserveWhiteSpace = false; $doc->formatOutput = true; $xml_string = $doc->saveXML(); echo $xml_string; 

You can make set these parameter right after you've created the DOMDocument as well:

$doc = new DomDocument('1.0'); $doc->preserveWhiteSpace = false; $doc->formatOutput = true; 

That's probably more concise. Output in both cases is (Demo):

<?xml version="1.0"?> <root>   <error>     <a>eee</a>     <b>sd</b>     <c>df</c>   </error>   <error>     <a>eee</a>     <b>sd</b>     <c>df</c>   </error>   <error>     <a>eee</a>     <b>sd</b>     <c>df</c>   </error> </root> 

I'm not aware how to change the indentation character(s) with DOMDocument. You could post-process the XML with a line-by-line regular-expression based replacing (e.g. with preg_replace):

$xml_string = preg_replace('/(?:^|\G)  /um', "\t", $xml_string); 

Alternatively, there is the tidy extension with tidy_repair_string which can pretty print XML data as well. It's possible to specify indentation levels with it, however tidy will never output tabs.

tidy_repair_string($xml_string, ['input-xml'=> 1, 'indent' => 1, 'wrap' => 0]);