This code outputs XML, which can be accessed from LiveCode. Here we have used a test database to retrieve data. Place this file in a web server and try running it using your own test database or you can download the test script along with the stacks. Please note before running the script you will have to create a database and the table.

<?php
	$number_of_posts = 10;
	$format = 'xml';
     $link = mysql_connect('localhost','root','root') or die('Cannot connect to the DB');
	  @mysql_select_db('home_food',$link) or die('Cannot select the DB');
	  $query = "SELECT name from reg_users";
          $result = @mysql_query($query,$link) or die('Errant query:  '.$query) ;
	$posts = array();
	if(@mysql_num_rows($result)) {
		while($post = @mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
			 $posts[] = array('post'=>$post);
		}
	}
	if($format == 'json') {
		header('Content-type: application/json');
		echo json_encode(array('posts'=>$posts));
	}
	 else {
	    header('Content-type: text/xml');
	    echo '<posts>';
	    foreach($posts as $index => $post) {
	      if(is_array($post)) {
	        foreach($post as $key => $value) {
	          if(is_array($value)) {
	            foreach($value as $tag => $val) {
	              echo '<',$tag,'>',htmlentities($val),'</',$tag,'>';
	            }
	          }
	        }
	      }
	    }
	    echo '</posts>';
	  }
	@mysql_close($link);
?>

<posts>

<name>karthik</name>

<name>Thomas</name>

<name>Ravi</name>

<name>Alex</name>

<name>Kirushanth</name>

</posts>

The stack contains a Button and a Scrolling Text Field

Begin the script with the following code

on mouseUp 
# When the button is clicked, load up the preferences and put them into the field
   loadPreferences   
end mouseUp

command loadPreferences
# There are two parts to loading the XML Data. The first part is reading the XML Data into memory and
# creating an XML "tree". The second part is to process the tree and extract the wanted data from it.
# This function reads the XML Data, and returns the tree. The tree is represented as a number, the actual
# tree structure and data is managed by LiveCode and so we don't need to worry about it.
   local tTree
   put readPreferencesToXMLTree() into tTree
   if tTree is empty then
      exit loadPreferences
   end if
   
# This command reads the preferences we require from the tree and displays them.
   processPreferencesTree tTree

# Close the XML tree. This will free up the memory that the tree was using and prevent our 
# application using more memory than it needs or "leaking" memory by creating multiple trees
# without closing any of them.
   revDeleteXMLTree tTree
end loadPreferences

Note that this code doesn't do anything just yet, because we haven't yet implemented the function readPreferencesToXMLTree and the command processPreferencesTree.

Next, we implement a function to read the XML. This is done in two steps, first the XML is read into a variable like any other text file would be, secondly, an XML "tree" is created from the file. This tree allows us to manipulate the XML data easily.

The code to read the XML file and create the tree looks like this:

# This function reads the XML from Web Service, and turns it into an XML Tree. The tree is then returned
# for the second part of the process.
private function readPreferencesToXMLTree
# Load the Web Services URL to a variable. 
   set the itemDelimiter to slash
   local tPreferencesFile
   put URL "http://127.0.0.1:8081/livecode/samplexml1.php" into tPreferencesFile
   
   local tPreferencesData, tResult
   put tPreferencesFile into tPreferencesData
   put the result into tResult
   
   if tResult is not empty then
      answer error "Failed to read preferences file at location: " & tPreferencesFile
      return empty
   end if
   
  # Create the XML "tree" from the data, checking to make sure that the file has loaded properly.
  # The revCreateXMLTree function will return a number (the tree's "handle" or "id") if it succeeds,
  # otherwise it will return a message saying why it failed.
   local tTree
   put revCreateXMLTree(tPreferencesData, false, true, false) into tTree   
   if tTree is not an integer then
      answer error "Failed to process preferences file with error: " & tTree
      return empty
   end if
   
   
   return tTree
end readPreferencesToXMLTree

Once we have the XML tree, the final step is to use LiveCode's XML library to get the required information out of it. We use a series of calls to the XML library to extract each piece of information from the tree.

private command processPreferencesTree pTree   
   
	# First, we get a list of Names, then we can loop through them and get each one in 	turn.
	# The revXMLChildNames function is useful for returning a list of nodes like this. 	The last parameter is important
	# as it tells the function to return a unique specifier for each node, allowing us 	to access them correctly. This will
	# look something like:
	# name[1]
	# name[2]
	# name[3]
	local tPosts
   put revXMLChildNames(pTree, "posts", return, "name", true) into tPosts     
   local tListOfNames

	# To get each Name, we just use revXMLNodeContents again. However here we concatentate the name of each node
   repeat for each line tName in tPosts
      put revXMLNodeContents(pTree, "posts/" & tName) & return after tListOfNames
   end repeat
   
   delete the last char of tListOfNames
   
   local tOutput
	# Now put the List of Names retrieved into the field
   
   put tListOfNames after tOutput
   set the text of field "NameList" to tOutput
   
end processPreferencesTree

By clicking on the button From Services, we can get the Data into our field with the help of Web Services.