How to Validate XML File against a Schema using PHP

Validating an XML file against a schema is essential to have control over the way the elements are arranged in the XML file. PHP has functions to perform this task. You can use the schemaValidate function to validate the XML file against a schema. This functions take the schema filename as a parameter.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<candidate>
<candidatename id='candid'>Robert</candidatename>
<candidatecity>New York</candidatecity>
<SSN>20072007</SSN>
<organization>XYZ Corp</organization>
</candidate>

The schema for this file is given in the file candidate.xsd. The schema is given as below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schemaxmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified">
<xs:element name="SSN" type="xs:int"/>
<xs:element name="organization" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="candidate">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element ref="candidatename"/>
<xs:element ref="candidatecity"/>
<xs:element ref="SSN"/>
<xs:element ref="organization"/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="candidatecity" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="candidatename">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base="xs:string">
<xs:attribute name="id" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>

The code to validate the XML file against the schema is given below.

<?php
$xdoc = new DomDocument;
$xmlfile = 'C:/php/xmlfiles/candidate.xml';
$xmlschema = 'C:/php/xmlfiles/candidate.xsd';
//Load the xml document in the DOMDocument object
$xdoc->Load($xmlfile);
//Validate the XML file against the schema
if ($xdoc->schemaValidate($xmlschema)) {
print "$xmlfile is valid.\n";
} else {
print "$xmlfile is invalid.\n";
}
?>

In the above code we are creating a DOMDocument first and loading the xml file into that DOMDocument object. Then we use the schemaValidate function to validate that document in the DOMDocument object. We use the if condition to print out the result of the validation. We use two variables called the $xmlfile and $xmlschema to store the values of the path to the XML file and the Schema file.

The output of the above code is given in the figure shown below:

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