MySQL to XML file - mysql

Question

I am trying to get MySQL database into an xml file; here is my code:
<?php
header("Content-type: text/xml");
include 'dbc.php';
$query = "SELECT * FROM airports LIMIT 50";
$result = mysql_query($query, $link)
or die('Error querying database.');
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('<xml/>');
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$draw = $xml->addChild('draw');
$draw->addChild('ident',htmlentities(iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//IGNORE",$row['ident'])));
$draw->addChild('name',htmlentities(iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//IGNORE",$row['name'])));
}
mysql_close($link);
$fp = fopen("links2.xml","wb");
fwrite($fp,$xml->asXML());
fclose($fp);
Here is the error Im getting:
XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: /sql2xml2.php
Line Number 1, Column 2:
-^
What am I doing wrong???

Answer 1

Your XML is considered invalid in your XML reader because of the thrown warning, thus the XML Parsing Error: junk after document element issue.
As for the warning itself, you need to escape special entities (namely &, < and > in your content when adding it like that (using str_replace usually works well for only those 3 when it comes to XML, htmlentities may yield undesired effects, unless you supply PHP 5.4's ENT_XML1 mode).
Refer to a related answer for more information of why this happens.

Answer 2

If you want just to export MySQL database to local XML file you can use mysqldump tool:
mysqldump --xml -u username -p databasename [tablename] > filename.xml

Answer 3

Got it to work with this code:
<?
header("content-type:text/xml");
function getXML($query="SELECT * FROM airports limit 50")
{
include 'dbc.php';
$result = mysql_query($query, $link)
or die('Error querying database.');
$columns="";
echo "<xml>\n";
while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
$columns.="\t<airport>\n";
foreach($row as $key => $value)
{
$value = htmlentities(iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT",$value));
$value = htmlentities(iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//IGNORE",$value));
$columns.="\t\t<$key>$value</$key>\n";
}
$columns.="\t</airport>\n";
}
echo $columns;
echo "</xml>\n";
}
getXML();
?>