Error reading large plist files

[jacobraccuia]

thanks for the plist reader!

I am using a form to have users submit their itunes.xml plist to the site, which then parses the data and displays statistics about their listening habits.

It works fine when uploaded files ~ 20mb, but a 72mb is throwing the following error.

Warning: DOMDocument::loadXML(): (null)(null)xmlSAX2Characters: out of memory in Entity, line: 538384 in ..../classes/CFPropertyList/CFPropertyList.php on line 267.

I've increased the memory on my php server to 528mb and have a long time out to help troubleshoot this, but I didn't get anywhere.

You can test it yourself at: http://jacobraccuia.com/most_listened.php

Is this a server error or bug here?

Thanks

[lpotherat]

I think CFPropertyList will not be able to read large files, because it is not a stream parser. Even if we parse the xml with stream based parser, the class will still store all the informations in memory, wich is impossible with large files. A stream based CFPropertyList reader could be fine, but it's a lot of work !

[YannickGagnon]

Hey @jacobraccuia, it's not a bug and it's not really a server error either. Once you load a file into CFPropertyList, it will start creating object oriented entities for all objects. Unfortunately, there is no other option than storing them into memory. As I see it, you have two options: You either increase your memory limit, execution time limit and you limit the size of the file upload or you work directly in XML with XPath.

Hope this helps

[jasper2virtual]

Hi @lpotherat , I understood, CFPropertyList is not a stream parser, I have a headache problem too. My project plist files are very large. I have a idea, is it possible to use another stream reader to read my plist file first. to read each repeating node, then pass the node xml text into CFPropertyList. For example:

1. use XMLReader to parse my plist file
2. in the XMLReader reading loop, each time I capture a node I want, I pass it to create a new CFPropertyList object by loadXMLStream? is it possible? anyway I will try it today.

[lpotherat]

Sorry for the late answer, do you have any news on your tests ? @jasper2virtual

[jasper2virtual]

Hi @lpotherat , Oh yes, I have tried it and create the pull request https://github.com/rodneyrehm/CFPropertyList/pull/37

[rodneyrehm]

Please note that per #36 we're looking for someone to take over maintenance of this project. I have moved on from PHP and neither the time nor the desire to keep working on CFPropertyList.