Part 2 of this tutorial covers Caching an XML feed locally.
XML feeds are in indispensable tool for any web site that offers live content. Dynamic and forever changing XML provides the perfect tool to keep up your pages looking fresh.

But what is an XML feed? and how do your integrate it into your web pages?
By the end of these few pages, you will have everything you need to remove the cloak of mystery that surrounds XML.

Back in 1993 I was in my local paper shop and I saw a magazine that said "How to write a page HTML". This caught my eye, and over the next 5 issues I was hooked as it slowly put together how to make a simple "Hello World!" web page, in NOTEPAD! The magic that stood before me on that first page was nothing but outstanding, how far away that seems now. The point of my story was although we now program in many different languages from xhtml, asp, php and flash; HTML stays at the heart of almost every web page today. Where would I be now, or how much I would know about web site building can only be imagined, but what I do know is I have picked up a lot along the way. I am no expert by any means, but what I can teach you about dealing with an XML feed will be taught to you as I would have liked to be taught and hopefully it will be of some use to you. I will stay away from technical jargon and just explain the things you need to know to get the job done. I will provide examples of everything you see, and tell you how to use them.

So what is an XML feed?
An XML feed is basically a collection of data, separated up by tags. These tags can be called anything, but must have a starting tag, and a closing tag. e.g. <tag>This is the tag data</tag>

OK, so your thinking, that's all well and good, but if I put that in an HTML document it's not going to do anything.
You would be right, what you need to do is to sort all this data and tags and store it into something so you can then use PHP to organize and display it all for you.
Long ago when I was learning, like you, what I was supposed to do with an XML feed I came across this PHP script that I have used to this day. Nothing I have looked at since has been as simple or handy as this one. The script was originally from Eric Rosebrock at http://www.phpfreaks.com You can download the very script that I use here. In fact if you are going to follow anything that I show you, that script is a must. When you need to use this script on your own server, all you need to do is upload it into the same directory as the pages that are going to be using it, then use the PHP function include_once("clsParseXML.php"); to call it into your PHP pages.

Next Getting The XML Feed