Confused could use some assistance

[Sarah]

Hi there,

Unfortunately I am a Mainframe programmer, I have html programming experience and I do understand XML to a degree but I have run into a brick wall and it may be due to the description of a simple task given to me.

I recently requested information from a company that my company is paying to use services from. My request was simple, how can I display my companies current available employees (those logged into the system awaiting a customer support call) as they become available, within my companies website page... Could I do this with html?

The response I received was this...

Hello,
We have currently updated our process to allow for XML.
It is a very straightforward XML feed, you draw the data from our datasource URL link and then format it on your website however you like.
The feed form includes:
<status></status>

<category></category>

<name></name>

<dialin_id></dialin_id>

<profile></profile>

<connect></connect>

This is the link for your Advisor quick list: https://prodca.click4talk.com/c4a/admin/daal.php?gid=30154&un=Eluminay%20Inc. Please let us know if you continue to have problems.

Ok, I've seen Feeds before, but how in the world do I turn this into something that can be viewed over a website? Or are they giving me the wrong Code? You mentioned that XML is being used for Cell phone programming and thats what I thought also, have they just misinterpreted my wants here? Or can you actually take XML and have it output to a Window Browser the actual data/images within the datasource?

Please anyone help here, Its been a long time since I"ve tried to aquire a new language and although XML seems fairly straightforward, I'm not sure that this is the response I was looking for due to my inexperience.

:eek: Sarah

[helmus]

you can load an xml page whit php, (or any other server side function) and parse the data into variables and values, which you can easily use to create a html output.

For php:
It should be simple whit php, unfortunaly , I really don't understand it, i ( haven't really tried yet, so don't let that discourage you ) , there are lot of function you need or can use to get some clean data.

Here is the php.net tutorial for xml parsing:
http://be2.php.net/xml

And all the xml functions:
http://be2.php.net/manual/en/function.utf8-decode.php

i'm sure that if you are willing, you will figure it out.

also,

If you havn't got a clue what php is or you don't understand a thing from what i'm saying, than let me know what feed you where expecting.

[vang]

No, you can't do that with just HTML and XML. You'll need some kind of scripting like Javascript, PHP, or ASP to parse that data... Just an assumption, but that link points to a PHP document, so you are probably going to be writing some PHP code to parse the XML. Javascript would work too, so it really depends on which you're more comfortable with.

First, I suggest trying to view the XML less as a language, and more as a database. Instead of querying it, you have to parse it.

Second, if you want to really build that, you're going to have to run through each user instance (use a loop of course) and only output the ones that have a status semi-equivalent to "online."

Helmus has some links there for PHP parsers, but if you want something a little more custom, let me know if I can help!