there  are    and    and/or    tags  present,  the  database  can  be  read, 

displayed and searched through. 

The parse() function in parse2.inc invokes a series of in built XML related functions in 

PHP.  The  coder  creates  two  functions  to  define  exactly  what  should  happen  when  the 

parser meets either an opening XML tag or a closing one. The function for an opening 

tag,  in  this  case  called  startElement(),  must  always  take  the  handle  of  the  XML  parser 

($parser), the name of the tag ($name) and the associative array of attributes ($attribs[]) 

as  parameters.  The  corresponding  closing  tag  function  (endElement())  takes  only  the 

parser and the tag name as attributes. For the purposes of this system, endElement() did 

absolutely nothing at all, our only concern being with tag names and attributes. 

When  startElement()  comes  across  a  tag  called  either  SERVICE,  ITEM  or  SHOP,  it 

pushes the attributes of that tag onto a global array called $shopsarray[]. It is the parser 

engine,  incidentally,  that  automatically  capitalises  the  attribute  names     it  proves  to  be 

convenient later on when displaying the names in a search panel on the left. Once each 

shop has been run through, the $shopsarray[] of our example shops will look something 

like this: 

Array( 

[0] => Array( 

[BIZNAME] => Killian Computer Software Engineers 

) 

[1] => Array( 

[DESC] => laptop 

[MAKE] => Toshiba 

[MODEL] => Satellite 

[PRICE] => 1599 

) 

[2] => Array( 

[DESC] => laptop 

[MAKE] => HP 

[MODEL] => Omnibook 

[PRICE] => 2105 

[COLOUR] => blue 

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