How to display XML elements by the value of their attributes using PHP

Question

I'm trying to run some reporting for an event feed that I have. I'm using the web services that my event manager provides to create an XML file using PHP. That is working great. This is the XML that I am getting:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ArrayOfTransactionInformation>
  <Transaction Transaction_Id="3126" IsSuccess="true" IsReviewed="true">
    <Column Name="instance_id" Value="65104108-6355-49C2-ACA7-8D5A28C962BD" />
    <Column Name="amount" Value="700.0000" />
    <Column Name="purchasedate" Value="2014-09-22T17:00:13" />
    <Column Name="authorizationcode" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="custtransnum" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="retrievalcode" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="appealcode" Value="" />
    <Column Name="transactionlastupdated" Value="2014-09-22T17:00:13" />
    <Column Name="billingname" Value="John Test" />
    <Column Name="creditcardtype" Value="N/A" />
    <Column Name="lastfourdigits" Value="1111" />
    <Column Name="achbankname" Value="" />
    <Column Name="achbankstate" Value="" />
    <Column Name="achaccountnumlast2" Value="" />
    <Column Name="achroutingnumlast2" Value="" />
    <Column Name="achchecknum" Value="" />
    <Column Name="achaccounttype" Value="" />
    <Column Name="billingemail" Value="john@test.com" />
    <Column Name="billingphone" Value="" />
    <Column Name="billingstreet1" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="billingstreet2" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="billingcity" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="billingstate" Value="N/A" />
    <Column Name="billingzip" Value="N/A" />
    <Column Name="billingcountry" Value="Skipped billing - not applicable" />
    <Column Name="paymenttype" Value="OT" />
    <Column Name="paymentfrequency" Value="" />
    <Column Name="totalscheduledamount" Value="" />
    <Column Name="nextpaymentamount" Value="" />
    <Column Name="nextpaymentdate" Value="" />
    <Column Name="paymentsremaining" Value="" />
    <Column Name="amounttodate" Value="" />
    <Column Name="firstpaymentdate" Value="" />
    <Column Name="initialtransactionid" Value="0" />
    <Column Name="fromfacebook" Value="False" />
    <Column Name="communityid" Value="2" />
    <Column Name="agentid" Value="" />
    <Column Name="agentname" Value="" />
    <Column Name="merchantaccountname" Value="Cyber Source" />
    <Column Name="control_id" Value="2055" />
    <Column Name="control_type" Value="event" />
    <Column Name="control_name" Value="Bowl Game Registration Template" />
    <Column Name="constituent_id" Value="" />
    <Column Name="imod_member_id" Value="280873" />
    <TransactionItems>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10355">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="bus_h2_early_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10356">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="bus_h3_early_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10357">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="bus_h4_early_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10358">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="party_ind_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10359">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="party_table_type_1_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10360">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="tailgate_ind_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10349">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_4_fn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10350">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_4_sn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10351">
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10352">
        <Column Name="total" Value="400.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="1" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10353">
        <Column Name="total" Value="300.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="1" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10354">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="bus_h1_early_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10343">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_2_fn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10344">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_2_sn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10345">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_2_tn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10346">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_3_fn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10347">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_3_sn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10348">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_3_tn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10340">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_1_fn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10341">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_1_sn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
      <TransactionItem Imod_Member_Id="280873" Type="CommerceItem" Transaction_Item_Id="Item-10342">
        <Column Name="sku" Value="hotel_1_tn_king_paid" />
        <Column Name="total" Value="0.0000" />
        <Column Name="quantity" Value="0" />
        <Column Name="fairmarketvalue" Value="0.0000" />
      </TransactionItem>
    </TransactionItems>
    <LinkedTransaction>
      <TransactionId>0</TransactionId>
      <Amount>0</Amount>
      <ControlId>0</ControlId>
      <ControlType />
      <ControlName />
      <PaymentType />
      <TotalScheduledAmount>0</TotalScheduledAmount>
    </LinkedTransaction>
  </Transaction>
</ArrayOfTransactionInformation>

It seems that they output every field to XML with the same tag name. I need to be able to pull each individual element and I need to be able to do that for the whole file, for instance, when there are several entries I would need to be able to pull and display all the names of entries, which would be billingname.

I am able to pull elements from this, but I just cannot figure out how to pull elements based on their attribute values. I have been trying to use the xpath method and several other variations.

This is the PHP that I have that will pull all elements within the <Transaction> element successfully:

$xml=simplexml_load_file("reporting.xml");
echo $xml->getName() . "<br>";
echo "<table width=700>";

for ($i = 0; ; $i++){
  foreach($xml->Transaction->Column[$i]->attributes() as $a => $b) {
    echo "<tr><td>";
    echo $a,'="',$b,"\"\n";
    echo "</td></tr>";
  }
}

echo "</table>";

Any idea on how I could use the PHP to display the data using the values of the attributes? Or to better explain, I need to do a foreach (i think) to find all instances of billingname and then echo the value of that, for instance "John Test".

Given this XML structure, you might be better off transforming the `Column` nodes to use the `name` as the tag name -- e.g. `` ==> `John Test`. It will make the data much easier to handle. — i alarmed alien, Oct 03 '14 at 22:13
possible duplicate of: [SimpleXML: Selecting Elements Which Have A Certain Attribute Value](http://stackoverflow.com/q/992450/367456) — hakre, Oct 11 '14 at 19:17

har07 · Answer 1 · 2014-10-03T22:52:54.677

You can try using XPath to select particular part of an XML document. In simplexml, it would looks something like this :

$result = $xml->xpath('//Column[@Name="billingname"]');
foreach($result as $column){
    echo $column['Value'];
}

Above XPath select all <Column>s having name attribute equals "billingname"

I'm not PHP expert, just referenced manual documents : SimpleXMLElement::xpath, Basic SimpleXML usage

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '14 at 07:07

Cheers, this is fully working examples in 2 different ways (https://github.com/Waldz/Examples/tree/master/xml-parsing).

Using XPath:

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->load('reporting.xml');

$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);

// If you want to read all Column tags
$columnAttributes = $xpath->query("//ArrayOfTransactionInformation/Transaction/Column");
foreach ($columnAttributes as $columnTag) {
    /** @var \DOMElement $columnTag */
    echo sprintf(
        "%s = %s\n",
        $columnTag->getAttribute('Name'),
        $columnTag->getAttribute('Value')
    );
}

// If you want to read exact attribute
$billingNameAttribute = $xpath->query("//ArrayOfTransactionInformation/Transaction/Column[@Name='billingname']/@Value");
if ($billingNameAttribute->length > 0) {
    echo $billingNameAttribute->item(0)->value;
}

Using SimpleXML:

$xml = simplexml_load_file("reporting.xml");

foreach ($xml->Transaction->Column as $column) {
    echo sprintf(
        "%s = %s\n",
        $column->attributes()->Name,
        $column->attributes()->Value
    );
}

TML · Answer 3 · 2014-10-03T23:09:02.193

0

I wrote a solution using DOM instead of simplexml, because I find the DOM an easier API to work with. The core of it is:

foreach($dom->getElementsByTagName('Column') as $column) {
  echo '<tr><td>';
  $name = $column->attributes->getNamedItem('Name')->textContent;
  $value = $column->attributes->getNamedItem('Value')->textContent;
  if ($name === 'billingname') {
      echo "{$name} = {$value}";
  }
  echo '</td></tr>';
}

edited Oct 03 '14 at 23:09

answered Oct 03 '14 at 21:41

TML

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Thank you for the quick response. The only problem is that that still returns every tag with those values. I need to be able to return specific based on their value. For instance, only display the billing names. – Will Anderson Oct 03 '14 at 21:48
Personal taste, I know, but to show why SimpleXML has "simple" in its name: `foreach($dom->getElementsByTagName('Column') as $column)` -> `foreach($sx->Column as $column)`; `echo $column->attributes->getNamedItem('Name')->textContent;` -> `echo $column['Name'];` – IMSoP Oct 03 '14 at 23:04
@WillAnderson So add a conditional around the echo: `$name = $column->attributes->getNamedItem('Name')->textContent; if (some test on $name passes) echo $name;` – TML Oct 03 '14 at 23:07

How to display XML elements by the value of their attributes using PHP

3 Answers3