Installation

In order to use nodeXML you need an HTTP server (Apache, IIS, etc.) and at least version 4.0.4 patch 1 of php scripting language. php source or binary archives can be found at www.php.net. Installation tips for php are provided within its archive; nodeXML doesn't require any special installation option of php, except that it's correctly installed to work with your web server and with your database. For example, if you are going to use a mysql database, you have to specify it while configuring php installation, in order to install the correct libraries. You can find extensive documentation about options of installation on the site mentioned above. When you have installed php and it works with your server and your database, unpack nodeXML archive within your HTTP document root: files will be extracted in a main directory called nodexml/. You should create a directory nodexml/ under /usr/lib/php, or any directory which is mentioned in php include paths. For security reasons it would be better to choose a directory out of the http document root.
In order to set php include path you have to edit your php.ini file in the following way: open php.ini, find the line:

include_path = "paths"; UNIX: "/path1:/path2"  Windows: "\path1;\path2"

Modify this line adding directory "." and adding your HTTP documents root at the beginning of the paths string. I suggest to put your config and map files under php libraries directory, which is usually in the include path by php installation default.
Move the file alias2file under the newly created nodexml/ directory and then create there the directories config and map, which will contain config and map files.

After setting up a map and a config file, you can query nodeXML simply connecting to the URL

http://yourserver.yourdomain/nodexml/nodexml.php?q=select+mymap+from+myname

where map.xml is the name of your map file and myname is the alias which corresponds to the config file in alias2file. If your browser can't read XML, all you will see is an empty page. Look at your page source, then. If you have correctly configured everything, you should see an XML document with the structure that you have chosen and containing every record from your table. You can ask nodexml to show results in HTML for visualisation purposes, adding an option to your query URL:

http://yourserver.yourdomain/nodexml/nodexml.php?q=select+mymap+from+myname&html=yes