QueryPath: It's like PHP jQuery in Drupal!

QueryPathIt’s like PHP jQuery for Drupal

http://querypath.orghttp://api.querypath.org

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

http://querypath.org


Matt ButcherMaintainer of QueryPath

Author of 6 books

Drupal developer atConsumerSearch.Com “Learning Drupal 7” will be

out in RAW this monthhttp://packtpub.com


http://packtpub.com

http://packtpub.com

Emily BrandJust completed a

GSoC QueryPath project.MA in Computer Science

IT Developer/EngineerHP


What Is QueryPath?


A PHP library for working with HTML, XML, and

Web services.


Follows the jQuery interfaceas much as possible.


Why do we need it?


The Task

Find all <a></a>

tags who havethe ancestor

<div></div>


The DOM API

• At least seventeen classes, each with dozens of methods.

• Complex data structure.

• Checkered history in PHP.

• VERY powerful.


SimpleXML

• One class, about a dozen functions and methods.

• Turns XML into basic objects.

• Makes easy stuff easy, and makes everything else insanely hard.

Same size as DOMExample


SAX / Expat

• Event based.

• Write your own parser handler.

• One per XML format.

• Only reliable “legacy” library.

Same size,fewer features


QueryPath

• Compact library.

• Functions are short and mnemonic.

• The power of DOM, but simpler than SimpleXML

• (Shhh... don’t tell, but it’s built on the DOM.)

[This space intentionally left blank ]


Lots of Features,One function.


• Open XML/HTML file: qp(‘somefile.xml’);

• Parse string: qp(‘<html>...</html>’);

• Get URL: qp(‘http://drupal.org');

• Use DOM or SimpleXML object: qp($ele);

Files, strings, objects...


http://drupal.org

http://drupal.org

Search with CSS

qp($rss_url, ‘item > title’);

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" version="2.0" xml:base="http://technosophos.com"> <channel> <title>TechnoSophos</title> <link>http://technosophos.com</link> <item> <title> Drupal Dojo: "QueryPath" </title> <link>http://technosophos.com/content/...</link> <description> On August 17th at 12pm EDT (9AM PDT)... </description> </item> </channel></rss>


http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/

http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/

http://technosophos.com




http://technosophos.com/content/

http://technosophos.com/content/

Chaining (Fluent API)


$qp = new QueryPath(‘my.xml’);$qp->find(‘root’);$qp->append(‘<p>Hi.</p>’)


qp(‘my.xml’, ‘root’)->append(‘<p>Hi.</p>’);


Some Things it Does• Import/Scrape HTML

• Read XML files

• Remote web services

• SVG image manipulation

• RSS or Atom feeds

• Retrieve database data into XML/HTML

• Work with RDFa

• Run SPARQL queries on Semantic Web

• Generate XML

• Transform using XSLT

• Interact with RDBMS

• And more...


QueryPath and Drupal


Myth“QueryPath is for Drupal”

QueryPath is a PHP library, and will work with any PHP tool.*


FactThe QueryPath Drupal modules

provides all you need.

You can easily use QueryPath within Drupal.

http://drupal.org/project/querypath




What’s Been Done with QueryPath?


Honestly, I can’t keep track anymore.But here are a few examples.


QueryPath 2.1


Better HTMLUse

htmlqp() to parse HTML.

Six lines ofcode to grab

headlines fromd.o


jQuery 1.4 Features• attach & detach

• has

• even & odd

• first & last

• firstChild & lastChild

• nextUntil, prevUntil & parentsUntil

• More...


Tons of new documentation and examples.


New Logo

Designed by Michael Mesker


And the Drupal module...


Drupal 7 version is DONE!


Demos


• Stable: QueryPath 2.0.1http://querypath.org

• Development: QueryPath 2.1http://github.com/technosophos/querypath

• Drupal modules at http://drupal.org/project/querypath




http://github.com/technosophos/querypath

http://github.com/technosophos/querypath



QueryPath: It's like PHP jQuery in Drupal!

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