Parsing Huge XML Files in PHP

There are only two php APIs that are really suited for processing large files. The first is the old expat api, and the second is the newer XMLreader functions. These apis read continuous streams rather than loading the entire tree into memory (which is what simplexml and DOM does).

For an example, you might want to look at this partial parser of the DMOZ-catalog:

<?phpclass SimpleDMOZParser{    protected $_stack = array();    protected $_file = "";    protected $_parser = null;    protected $_currentId = "";    protected $_current = "";    public function __construct($file)    {        $this->_file = $file;        $this->_parser = xml_parser_create("UTF-8");        xml_set_object($this->_parser, $this);        xml_set_element_handler($this->_parser, "startTag", "endTag");    }    public function startTag($parser, $name, $attribs)    {        array_push($this->_stack, $this->_current);        if ($name == "TOPIC" && count($attribs)) {            $this->_currentId = $attribs["R:ID"];        }        if ($name == "LINK" && strpos($this->_currentId, "Top/Home/Consumer_Information/Electronics/") === 0) {            echo $attribs["R:RESOURCE"] . "\n";        }        $this->_current = $name;    }    public function endTag($parser, $name)    {        $this->_current = array_pop($this->_stack);    }    public function parse()    {        $fh = fopen($this->_file, "r");        if (!$fh) {            die("Epic fail!\n");        }        while (!feof($fh)) {            $data = fread($fh, 4096);            xml_parse($this->_parser, $data, feof($fh));        }    }}$parser = new SimpleDMOZParser("content.rdf.u8");$parser->parse();

This is a very similar question to Best way to process large XML in PHP but with a very good specific answer upvoted addressing the specific problem of DMOZ catalogue parsing.However, since this is a good Google hit for large XMLs in general, I will repost my answer from the other question as well:

My take on it:

https://github.com/prewk/XmlStreamer

A simple class that will extract all children to the XML root element while streaming the file.Tested on 108 MB XML file from pubmed.com.

class SimpleXmlStreamer extends XmlStreamer {    public function processNode($xmlString, $elementName, $nodeIndex) {        $xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);        // Do something with your SimpleXML object        return true;    }}$streamer = new SimpleXmlStreamer("myLargeXmlFile.xml");$streamer->parse();

I've recently had to parse some pretty large XML documents, and needed a method to read one element at a time.

If you have the following file complex-test.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><Complex>  <Object>    <Title>Title 1</Title>    <Name>It's name goes here</Name>    <ObjectData>      <Info1></Info1>      <Info2></Info2>      <Info3></Info3>      <Info4></Info4>    </ObjectData>    <Date></Date>  </Object>  <Object></Object>  <Object>    <AnotherObject></AnotherObject>    <Data></Data>  </Object>  <Object></Object>  <Object></Object></Complex>

And wanted to return the <Object/>s

PHP:

require_once('class.chunk.php');$file = new Chunk('complex-test.xml', array('element' => 'Object'));while ($xml = $file->read()) {  $obj = simplexml_load_string($xml);  // do some parsing, insert to DB whatever}###########Class File###########<?php/** * Chunk *  * Reads a large file in as chunks for easier parsing. *  * The chunks returned are whole <$this->options['element']/>s found within file. *  * Each call to read() returns the whole element including start and end tags. *  * Tested with a 1.8MB file, extracted 500 elements in 0.11s * (with no work done, just extracting the elements) *  * Usage: * <code> *   // initialize the object *   $file = new Chunk('chunk-test.xml', array('element' => 'Chunk')); *    *   // loop through the file until all lines are read *   while ($xml = $file->read()) { *     // do whatever you want with the string *     $o = simplexml_load_string($xml); *   } * </code> *  * @package default * @author Dom Hastings */class Chunk {  /**   * options   *   * @var array Contains all major options   * @access public   */  public $options = array(    'path' => './',       // string The path to check for $file in    'element' => '',      // string The XML element to return    'chunkSize' => 512    // integer The amount of bytes to retrieve in each chunk  );  /**   * file   *   * @var string The filename being read   * @access public   */  public $file = '';  /**   * pointer   *   * @var integer The current position the file is being read from   * @access public   */  public $pointer = 0;  /**   * handle   *   * @var resource The fopen() resource   * @access private   */  private $handle = null;  /**   * reading   *   * @var boolean Whether the script is currently reading the file   * @access private   */  private $reading = false;  /**   * readBuffer   *    * @var string Used to make sure start tags aren't missed   * @access private   */  private $readBuffer = '';  /**   * __construct   *    * Builds the Chunk object   *   * @param string $file The filename to work with   * @param array $options The options with which to parse the file   * @author Dom Hastings   * @access public   */  public function __construct($file, $options = array()) {    // merge the options together    $this->options = array_merge($this->options, (is_array($options) ? $options : array()));    // check that the path ends with a /    if (substr($this->options['path'], -1) != '/') {      $this->options['path'] .= '/';    }    // normalize the filename    $file = basename($file);    // make sure chunkSize is an int    $this->options['chunkSize'] = intval($this->options['chunkSize']);    // check it's valid    if ($this->options['chunkSize'] < 64) {      $this->options['chunkSize'] = 512;    }    // set the filename    $this->file = realpath($this->options['path'].$file);    // check the file exists    if (!file_exists($this->file)) {      throw new Exception('Cannot load file: '.$this->file);    }    // open the file    $this->handle = fopen($this->file, 'r');    // check the file opened successfully    if (!$this->handle) {      throw new Exception('Error opening file for reading');    }  }  /**   * __destruct   *    * Cleans up   *   * @return void   * @author Dom Hastings   * @access public   */  public function __destruct() {    // close the file resource    fclose($this->handle);  }  /**   * read   *    * Reads the first available occurence of the XML element $this->options['element']   *   * @return string The XML string from $this->file   * @author Dom Hastings   * @access public   */  public function read() {    // check we have an element specified    if (!empty($this->options['element'])) {      // trim it      $element = trim($this->options['element']);    } else {      $element = '';    }    // initialize the buffer    $buffer = false;    // if the element is empty    if (empty($element)) {      // let the script know we're reading      $this->reading = true;      // read in the whole doc, cos we don't know what's wanted      while ($this->reading) {        $buffer .= fread($this->handle, $this->options['chunkSize']);        $this->reading = (!feof($this->handle));      }      // return it all      return $buffer;    // we must be looking for a specific element    } else {      // set up the strings to find      $open = '<'.$element.'>';      $close = '</'.$element.'>';      // let the script know we're reading      $this->reading = true;      // reset the global buffer      $this->readBuffer = '';      // this is used to ensure all data is read, and to make sure we don't send the start data again by mistake      $store = false;      // seek to the position we need in the file      fseek($this->handle, $this->pointer);      // start reading      while ($this->reading && !feof($this->handle)) {        // store the chunk in a temporary variable        $tmp = fread($this->handle, $this->options['chunkSize']);        // update the global buffer        $this->readBuffer .= $tmp;        // check for the open string        $checkOpen = strpos($tmp, $open);        // if it wasn't in the new buffer        if (!$checkOpen && !($store)) {          // check the full buffer (in case it was only half in this buffer)          $checkOpen = strpos($this->readBuffer, $open);          // if it was in there          if ($checkOpen) {            // set it to the remainder            $checkOpen = $checkOpen % $this->options['chunkSize'];          }        }        // check for the close string        $checkClose = strpos($tmp, $close);        // if it wasn't in the new buffer        if (!$checkClose && ($store)) {          // check the full buffer (in case it was only half in this buffer)          $checkClose = strpos($this->readBuffer, $close);          // if it was in there          if ($checkClose) {            // set it to the remainder plus the length of the close string itself            $checkClose = ($checkClose + strlen($close)) % $this->options['chunkSize'];          }        // if it was        } elseif ($checkClose) {          // add the length of the close string itself          $checkClose += strlen($close);        }        // if we've found the opening string and we're not already reading another element        if ($checkOpen !== false && !($store)) {          // if we're found the end element too          if ($checkClose !== false) {            // append the string only between the start and end element            $buffer .= substr($tmp, $checkOpen, ($checkClose - $checkOpen));            // update the pointer            $this->pointer += $checkClose;            // let the script know we're done            $this->reading = false;          } else {            // append the data we know to be part of this element            $buffer .= substr($tmp, $checkOpen);            // update the pointer            $this->pointer += $this->options['chunkSize'];            // let the script know we're gonna be storing all the data until we find the close element            $store = true;          }        // if we've found the closing element        } elseif ($checkClose !== false) {          // update the buffer with the data upto and including the close tag          $buffer .= substr($tmp, 0, $checkClose);          // update the pointer          $this->pointer += $checkClose;          // let the script know we're done          $this->reading = false;        // if we've found the closing element, but half in the previous chunk        } elseif ($store) {          // update the buffer          $buffer .= $tmp;          // and the pointer          $this->pointer += $this->options['chunkSize'];        }      }    }    // return the element (or the whole file if we're not looking for elements)    return $buffer;  }}