Parse CDATA from a SOAP Response with PHP

Question

I'm trying to parse out the CDATA from a SOAP response using SimpleXML and Xpath. I get the output that I looking for but the output returned is one continuous line of data with no separators that would allow me to parse.

I appreciate any help!

Here is the SOAP response containing the CDATA that I need to parse:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <soapenv:Body>
      <ns1:getIPServiceDataResponse xmlns:ns1="http://ws.icontent.idefense.com/V3/2">
         <ns1:return xsi:type="ns1:IPServiceDataResponse" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <ns1:status>Success</ns1:status>
            <ns1:serviceType>IPservice_TIIncremental_ALL_xml_v1</ns1:serviceType>
            <ns1:ipserviceData><![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><threat_indicators><tidata><indicator>URL</indicator><format>STRING</format><value>http://update.lflink.com/aspnet_vil/debug.swf</value><role>EXPLOIT</role><sample_md5/><last_observed>2012-11-02 18:13:43.587000</last_observed><comment>APT Blade2009 - CVE-2012-5271</comment><ref_id/></tidata><tidata><indicator>URL</indicator><format>STRING</format><value>http://update.lflink.com/crossdomain.xml</value><role>EXPLOIT</role><sample_md5/><last_observed>2012-11-02 18:14:04.108000</last_observed><comment>APT Blade2009 - CVE-2012-5271</comment><ref_id/></tidata><tidata><indicator>DOMAIN</indicator><format>STRING</format><value>update.lflink.com</value><role>EXPLOIT</role><sample_md5/><last_observed>2012-11-02 18:15:10.445000</last_observed><comment>APT Blade2009 - CVE-2012-5271</comment><ref_id/></tidata></threat_indicators>]]></ns1:ipserviceData>
         </ns1:return>
      </ns1:getIPServiceDataResponse>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Here is PHP code I'm using to try to parse the CDATA:

<?php        
    $xml = simplexml_load_string($soap_response);
    $xml->registerXPathNamespace('ns1', 'http://ws.icontent.idefense.com/V3/2');

    foreach ($xml->xpath("//ns1:ipserviceData") as $item)
    {
        echo '<pre>';
        print_r($item);           
        echo '</pre>';
    }            
?>

Here's the print_r output:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [0] => URLSTRINGhttp://update.lflink.com/aspnet_vil/debug.swfEXPLOIT2012-11-02 18:13:43.587000APT Blade2009 - CVE-2012-5271URLSTRINGhttp://update.lflink.com/crossdomain.xmlEXPLOIT2012-11-02 18:14:04.108000APT Blade2009 - CVE-2012-5271DOMAINSTRINGupdate.lflink.comEXPLOIT2012-11-02 18:15:10.445000APT Blade2009 - CVE-2012-5271
)

Any ideas what I can do to make the output usable? For example, parsing out each element of the CDATA output such as: <indicator></indicator>, <value></value>, <role></role>, etc.

FYI - Also tried using LIBXML_NOCDATA with no change in output.

Check below url. It works for me [https://stackoverflow.com/a/21330977/1248953](https://stackoverflow.com/a/21330977/1248953) — Manik Thakur, Aug 01 '17 at 11:24

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 02 '12 at 20:03

You get it as a single string because you have asked for that - just the string.

If you want to be able to parse that string as XML then, well create a new Simplexml object out of it.

Then you have another parser on the string which can parse the HTML (yes that simple; Demo):

$soap = simplexml_load_string($soapXML);
$soap->registerXPathNamespace('ns1', 'http://ws.icontent.idefense.com/V3/2');
$ipserviceData = simplexml_load_string($soap->xpath('//ns1:ipserviceData')[0]);

// <threat_indicators><tidata><indicator>URL</indicator>
echo $ipserviceData->tidata->indicator, "\n"; # URL

Btw, the LIBXML_NOCDATA flag^Docs only controls whether the <![CDATA[...]]> parts are preserved as CDATA nodes or merged into text-nodes.

In case you're using a PHP version smaller than current stable 5.4: http://codepad.org/rjvqR8gH — hakre, Nov 02 '12 at 20:36

Parse CDATA from a SOAP Response with PHP

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