Installing XML and XSLT Support
PHP 5 uses
libxml2 and libxslt as the
underlying foundation for its XML support. By hooking into these
tools, PHP developers don’t need to write their own
XML processors, which gives them more time to work on PHP.
Originally
written for the GNOME project, libxml2 is a
standalone library that can be used by other programs, including
languages like PHP. Written in C, libxml2 runs on
Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and many other operating systems.
The official
libxml2 web site is at http://www.xmlsoft.org/.
libxml2 offers several benefits over other XML
parsers: speed, licensing, and standards. While other XML parsers
might be faster in certain specialized circumstances,
libxml2 is overall one of the fastest parsing
engines available.
libxml2 also implements most XML specifications.
In addition to the basic XML standard, libxml2
also supports XML Namespaces, XPath, XPointer, XInclude, XML
Catalogs, Relax NG, and XML Schemas Part 2. Additional standards are
being added on a regular basis. libxml2 also
integrates with libxslt to support XSLT.
PHP 5 requires libxml2 2.5.10 or higher. If you
are running Unix or Mac OS X, find the version of
libxml2 on your machine by running
xml2-config --version:
% xml2-config --version
2.5.10If this program cannot be found or the version number is lower than
2.5.10, you must install (or upgrade) libxml2 on
your machine. The latest version of libxml2 is
available at http://www.xmlsoft.org/downloads.html.
By default, ...