Create new XML file and write data to it?

DOMDocument is a great choice. It's a module specifically designed for creating and manipulating XML documents. You can create a document from scratch, or open existing documents (or strings) and navigate and modify their structures.

$xml = new DOMDocument();$xml_album = $xml->createElement("Album");$xml_track = $xml->createElement("Track");$xml_album->appendChild( $xml_track );$xml->appendChild( $xml_album );$xml->save("/tmp/test.xml");

To re-open and write:

$xml = new DOMDocument();$xml->load('/tmp/test.xml');$nodes = $xml->getElementsByTagName('Album') ;if ($nodes->length > 0) {   //insert some stuff using appendChild()}//re-save$xml->save("/tmp/test.xml");

PHP has several libraries for XML Manipulation.

The Document Object Model (DOM) approach (which is a W3C standard and should be familiar if you've used it in other environments such as a Web Browser or Java, etc). Allows you to create documents as follows

<?php    $doc = new DOMDocument( );    $ele = $doc->createElement( 'Root' );    $ele->nodeValue = 'Hello XML World';    $doc->appendChild( $ele );    $doc->save('MyXmlFile.xml');?>

Even if you haven't come across the DOM before, it's worth investing some time in it as the model is used in many languages/environments.

With FluidXML you can generate and store an XML document very easily.

$doc = fluidxml();$doc->add('Album', true)        ->add('Track', 'Track Title');$doc->save('album.xml');

Loading a document from a file is equally simple.

$doc = fluidify('album.xml');$doc->query('//Track')        ->attr('id', 123);

https://github.com/servo-php/fluidxml