Another PHP - XML to CSV conversion issue With fputcsv

Question

I need some help on an issue: I'm converting an XML to CSV using a PHP script, but i have a problem with this, they're a properties in properties.

This is the XML file structure:

<Products>
 <Product>
   <Name>
     SomeProductName
   </Name>
   <Colour>
     Black
   </Colour>
  <Features>
   <Feature_0>
     this is feature 0
   </Feature_0>
   <Feature_1>
     this is feature 1
   </Feature_1>
   <Feature_2>
     this is feature 1
   </Feature_2>
  </Features>
 <Product>
</Product>

and this is my script :

{$filexml='product.xml';
if (file_exists($filexml)) {
  $xml = simplexml_load_file($filexml);
  $f = fopen('product.csv', 'w');
foreach($xml->Products->Product as $product) {    
  $values = array(
   "Name" => $product->Name, 
   "Colour" => $product->Colour, 
   "Features" => $product->Features);
   fputcsv($f, $values,',','"');
  }
fclose($f);
}

with this script i only get Feature_0, and I need to get all those features in my csv file. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

CSV isn't well suited for that sort of nested data.

Either you would have to create two csv files: prodcuts.csv and features.csv where entries from features.csv pointing to entries in products.csv, like in a relational database or you would have to flatten the feature list into a single string, so that the CSV would look like this:

"product_name", "product_color", "features"
"SomeProductName", "Black", "this is feature 0|this is feature 1|this is feature 2"
"AnotherProductName", "White", "this is feature foo|this is feature bar"

However the flatten function must make sure that the delimiter isn't part of the data itself.

I would encourage you to keep it xml, as it is best suited for nested data.