How to parse xml with simplexml?

Question

I am trying to parse the following xml but my code blew parses the first tag of each section only,

$xml = simplexml_load_string($response);       
foreach ($xml->person as $p) {
  $p = $p->attributes()->name;
  echo "     ".$p. "        ";
}

The output is Joe Ray Alex, but I need it to show the name of every person in the list, so it should be Joe Jack Ray John Edward Alex.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <people>
   <person name="Joe">
   <person name="Jack">
   </person>
   </person>

   <person name="Ray">
   <person name="John">
   <person name="Edward">
   </person>
   </person>

   <person name="Alex">
   </person>
 </people>

Is there any other option rather than changing the xml? because I receive the xml as a response from a web service.

Your xml is invalid. Also are you sure this is the structure you should be using? The nesting (without any context) seems unusual. — Francis Avila, Dec 28 '12 at 05:00

Jormundir · Answer 1 · 2012-12-28T05:20:25.340

1

Fix Your XML

IF you really want to print inner element data, you should make a recursive function:

function printNames($simpleXMLElement) {

    // Print the name attribute of each top level element
    foreach ($simpleXMLElement as $element) {

        // Print this elements name.
        $p = $simpleXMLElement->attributes()->name;
        echo "     ".$p."        ";

        // Send the inner elements to get their names printed
        foreach ($simpleXMLElement->children() as $child) {
            printNames($child);
        }
    }
}


$xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
printNames($xml);

edited Dec 28 '12 at 05:20

answered Dec 28 '12 at 05:01

Jormundir

430
4
11

Thanks for the answer but it does not show anything, the output is empty – Saeed Pirdost Dec 28 '12 at 05:09

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 28 '12 at 04:59

0

Why not correct the XML?

i.e.

<people>
   <person name="Joe" />
   <person name="Jack" />

   <person name="Ray" />
   <person name="John" />
   <person name="Edward" />

   <person name="Alex" />
 </people>

answered Dec 28 '12 at 04:59

Ed Heal

59,252
17
87
127

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 28 '12 at 05:02

Given your odd XML structure, you either have to look for and recurse down into any person elements you find, or you need to generate a flat list of all person elements.

Here is an xpath approach:

$people = $xml->xpath('descendant::person');

foreach ($people as $person) {
    echo $person['name'], "\n";
}

How to parse xml with simplexml?

3 Answers3