xml parsing in php4

Question

I know that this might be way too much to ask, but I have been reading about xml parsing and I just do not understand it! I did not realize that my client had PHP 4 until I was done programming (a lesson well learned), but I need this to work in php4:

$post_string= 'type=xml&cid=55505&minorRev=14&apiKey=4sr8d8bsn75tpcuja6ypx5g3&locale='.$userLocale.'&currencyCode='.$userCurr.'&customerIpAddress='.$userIp.'&customerUserAgent='.$userAgent.'&xml=<HotelListRequest><destinationId>7EEF0188-E4DC-4B45-B4A7-57E3DF950E1F</destinationId><supplierCacheTolerance>MED_ENHANCED</supplierCacheTolerance><numberOfResults>200</numberOfResults></HotelListRequest>';
//Relative path to the file with $_POST parsing
$path = "http://api.ean.com/ean-services/rs/hotel/v3/list"; 
$ch = curl_init($path); 
$fp = fopen('xml/data.xml','w');
//Send the data to the file
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_string); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Accept: application/xml')); 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
$val = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);//Close curl session
fclose($fp); //Close file overwrite
$data = simplexml_load_file('xml/data.xml');

I am simply stumped. I have only ever used this format to read an xml document. Can anyone out there transform this to work on php4?? Again I know that this is a lot to ask, but any help would be so greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You should make a note to your client that PHP 4 has not had any support at all since August 8^th, 2008!

That said, read this question which already address your problem.

(from referenced answer)

$xml = ...; // Get your XML data
$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();

// _start_element and _end_element are two functions that determine what
// to do when opening and closing tags are found
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, "_start_element", "_end_element");

// How to handle each char (stripping whitespace if needs be, etc
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "_character_data");  

xml_parse($xml_parser, $xml);

If your client really want to stick with unsupported PHP versions (or can't migrate to PHP 5), it is something that he should assume the cost for; maintaining legacy code usually requires more efforts.