README

This PHP code library provides tools for extracting Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) descriptors and associated data from a given XML file into an object representation.

It expects its input to be compliant with the 2025 or 2026 MeSH DTDs.

Installation

Use composer to add this library to your project.

composer require ilios/mesh-parser

Usage

Instantiate \Ilios\MeSH\Parser and invoke its parse() method with a URI that points at valid MeSH descriptors XML file.
This method call will return an instance of \Ilios\MeSH\Model\DescriptorSet; this is the entry point into the object representation of the descriptors data model.
Use getter methods on this object and its subcomponents to traverse and process this model.

Example

<?php

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

// provide a URL or a local file path.
//$uri = 'https://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/projects/mesh/MESH_FILES/xmlmesh/desc2026.xml';
$uri = __DIR__ . '/desc2026.xml';

// instantiate the parser and parse the input.
$parser = new \Ilios\MeSH\Parser();
$set = $parser->parse($uri);

// process parsed data, e.g.
$descriptor = $set->findDescriptorByUi('D000001');
echo "Descriptor ID (Name): {$descriptor->getUi()} ({$descriptor->getName()})\n";
$concepts = $descriptor->getConcepts();
foreach($concepts as $concept) {
    echo "- Concept ID (Name): {$concept->getUi()} ({$concept->getName()})\n";
    $terms = $concept->getTerms();
    foreach ($terms as $term) {
        // ...
    }
}