How does the use of XSLT in PHP allow for more flexible handling and manipulation of hierarchical data structures compared to direct array manipulation?
Using XSLT in PHP allows for more flexible handling and manipulation of hierarchical data structures compared to direct array manipulation because XSLT provides a powerful language for transforming XML documents. With XSLT, you can define templates to match specific elements in the XML data and specify how they should be transformed. This allows for more complex manipulations and transformations of hierarchical data structures without the need for extensive manual array manipulation.
// Load the XML data
$xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->load('data.xml');
// Load the XSL stylesheet
$xsl = new DOMDocument();
$xsl->load('stylesheet.xsl');
// Create a new XSLT processor
$proc = new XSLTProcessor();
$proc->importStylesheet($xsl);
// Transform the XML data using the XSL stylesheet
$newXml = $proc->transformToXML($xml);
// Output the transformed data
echo $newXml;