Unexpected memory exhaustion scenarios when processing large XML files with SimpleXML in PHP 8.1
I've been working on this all day and Can someone help me understand I'm updating my dependencies and I'm not sure how to approach I'm prototyping a solution and I'm trying to figure out I'm working on a personal project and I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm currently working with a memory exhaustion scenario when trying to parse a large XML file (around 500MB) using SimpleXML in PHP 8.1. The script runs fine for smaller XML files, but as soon as I attempt to load the larger file, I encounter the following behavior: ``` PHP Fatal behavior: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) ``` I've increased the memory limit in my `php.ini` to 512MB, but the scenario continues. Here's the code snippet I'm using to load and parse the XML: ```php $xmlFile = 'path/to/large_file.xml'; try { $xml = simplexml_load_file($xmlFile); } catch (Exception $e) { echo 'behavior: ', $e->getMessage(); } foreach ($xml->record as $record) { // Process each record } ``` I've also tried using `libxml_use_internal_errors(true)` to suppress warnings, but it doesn't resolve the memory scenario. From what I've read, SimpleXML loads the entire file into memory, which seems to be the root of the question. I considered switching to using XMLReader for a more memory-efficient approach, but I'm not sure how to adapt my existing logic to work with it. Has anyone successfully parsed large XML files using PHP without hitting memory limits? Any suggestions or examples on how to effectively switch to XMLReader while maintaining similar functionality would be greatly appreciated! What's the best practice here? I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. This is part of a larger web app I'm building. Am I missing something obvious? This is happening in both development and production on Ubuntu 22.04. Thanks for taking the time to read this! This issue appeared after updating to Php stable. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I'm working with Php in a Docker container on Windows 11. Thanks for your help in advance! Thanks for taking the time to read this!