ATWD1 Assignment: Code Example (1)

The original input file is a simple CSV file with 7 fields and 316 records. The first record is a header row.

We can process this CSV file and generate a simple XML file very easily.

Run

The output file isn't optimal for processing and also contains some repeating (unecessary) data. The location node repeats data already in the lat./long. nodes and the year value is repeated too.

However, we've taken a big leap. The data is now in a DOM compatible format!

For readabilty & easier processing purposes we would prefer a structure like the following:

For this transformation we can use PHP's built-in DOM facade library simpleXML or use XSLT (built for such xml-to-xml transformations).

Unfortunatly current PHP builds don't provide native support for XPath 2.0/3.0 so we have to do with XPath 1.0.

XPath 2.0/3.0 provide very powerful built in functions like distinct-values() so an expression like distinct-values(//record/Ward) would generate an array with unique wards.

(We can get around this by installing and using an external library like Saxon but lets use what we have - the current UWE/CEMS setup and XPath 1.0.)

Let's first consider a PHP only solution using the simpleXML and XMLWriter modules & XPath 1.0.

You can view the generated file transport_v1.xml

We'll next use XSLT 1.0 to do the same task and take a look at XSLT 2.0/3.0.

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url: http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~p-chatterjee/2015-16/modules/atwd1/assignment/examples/assignment_code_example1.html