Over the last little while I've come across quite a few XML feed generators written in PHP, with varying degrees of 'correctness'. Even though generating XML should be very simple, there's still quite a bit of pitfalls I feel every PHP or (insert your language)-developer should know about.
1. You are better off using an XML library
This is the first and foremost rule. Most people end up generating their xml using simple string concatenation, while there are many dedicated tools out there that really help you generate your own XML.
In PHP land the best example is XMLWriter. It is actually quite easy to use:
- <?php
- $xmlWriter = new XMLWriter();
- $xmlWriter->openMemory();
- $xmlWriter->startDocument('1.0','UTF-8');
- $xmlWriter->startElement('root'); …