I am working with php and heatmap js to generate a heat-map.
I was thinking of going down the path of allowing the user to upload a floor-map jpg file initially and then allow him to add the sensor names to different locations in the floor-map.
Once the sensor locations are specified, I need to save that configuration to an XML file. Once I have this set of information (img_id, [sensorid1,x1,y1], [sensorid2,x2,y2],..,[sensoridn,xn,yn]), I can query my database for the latest values of sensors and then display as heat-map on the image (on the specific sensors' x and y coordinates) real-time.
I would like to know if saving the configuration as XML is the right way of doing it. Is there there a better way of temporarily storing the information using javascript/PHP?
There are likely a bunch of ways to solve this. My preference would be for JSON, as it is natively supported by Javascript and PHP. It is also MUCH easier to read and write.
When you say "saving", what do you mean? If you need it to be stored server side, then creating DB entities that the data structure can be mapped to and stored in will be far better than trying to create files server-side. Depending on how the app gets hosted, you may not have permission to do that, and if your server ever goes away you could loose that data (However, there are safe ways to create files using a service like AWS S3). Storing it in a database not only gives you a single place to worry about backups, but also lets you query the data in interesting and powerful ways (SQL etc) easily, without having to figure out how to do that for files with every new query.