[Cialug] Re: XML training by HOTT

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 15:25 +0000, carl-olsen at mchsi.com wrote:
> SOAP is a common implementation of XML.  I think X-Cart uses it for real-time shipping calculations.  I learned most of what I know about SOAP from looking at the code that X-Cart sends to UPS.
> 
> RSS is another common implementation of XML and I've also learned about XML from looking at RSS feeds.
> 
> XML is used frequently for configuration files in software applications.

As someone else mentioned though, there is a lot of stuff about XML that
is non-intuitive. Working with people who understand XML made a big
difference for me in truly "getting it." And I'm the type of person who
usually learns best from books and hands on.

> PHP has great support for XML

I wasn't going to reply until I read this statement...

Try parsing this with PHP: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+cdmirrors-rss
Specifically, try grabbing the information about the mirror:continents
of items.

Simple XML has made xml parsing in PHP *much* easier, but still,
anything more than ultra-basic gets to be very tedious, very quickly.
Especially since PHP's otherwise awesome manual gives very little
practical information.

Just a disclaimer, I consider my self an avid PHP programmer and have
been coding primarily in PHP for over 5 years. Also, I know how to do
the above. But compare that to working with Python or Java and you might
retract your statement. If I have to use XML, I have several other tools
I turn to first if I can.
-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode