i am developing an application where php periodically updates and XML file which FLASH reads.
My concern is....will FLASH hang or error if it is trying to read an xml file while PHP is updating it?
which brings me to my next question....
how does the php DOM XML open_file and append_child functions work in terms of appending information to an xml file...is it more or less the same process as if you were fwrite() to the xml file?
If you generate the XML from a database, you should use transactions (with a decent isolation level), to make sure both sides get "valid/consistent" data. I believe a filesystem does this automagically for you (unless you asked otherwise).
As you simply generate a file, you have to make sure:
- No-one is allowed to read the file while there is someone writing/changing it.
- No-one is allowed to write/change the file if there is someone reading it.