The Responder Script

#!/usr/bin/ruby

#

# Define any constants

#

XMLFile = 'The name and path of your XML file goes in here. E.g. /home/me/myfile.xml'

#

# Print the headers

#

 puts "Content-type: text/xml"

 puts "Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate"

 puts "Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"

 puts "\n\n"

#

# Open the file and loop through its contents putting them to the output

#

open(XMLFile).each { |f| print f } 

exit

<?php

$handle = fopen("The name and path of your XML file goes in here. E.g. /home/me/myfile.xml", "r");

if ($handle)

{

    //

    // Send the appropriate headers

    //

    header('Content-Type: text/xml');

    header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");

    //A date in the past

    header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");

    //

    // Read to the end of the file putting the contents on the

    // output

    while (!feof($handle)) {

        $buffer = fgets($handle);

        echo $buffer;

    }

    fclose($handle);

}

?>

NB. I've not tested the above PHP script; but it should work.

You can save the PHP script as a .php file (e.g. responder.php) anywhere you fancy on your web server. It doesn't have to be in the cgi-bin directory.

To test that the XML file and responder script are working then you can call them directly in your web browser. For example: http://your-host.domain/responder.php. If all is well you'll get a rendition of your XML file in your browser. Possible problems are:

• If you get a page not found (404) error then you're addressing your responder script incorrectly.
• If the browser reports an error with the XML file then the most likely cause is a typo in one of the XML tags. For example: