Get an attribute value using SimpleXML for PHP

Question

I use SimpleXMLElement class for working with xml files in my project.

My question is: how to get an attribute value of some tag with some attribute? You may assume I know the name of the tag, the name of the attribute and it's location inside the xml file. For example, for such a string <someTag cp="c2"> knowing values 'someTag' and 'cp' I want to obtain the string "c2".

Thanks is advance.

The manual has some nice [introductory examples](http://php.net/manual/en/simplexml.examples-basic.php), which include accessing basic attributes. — IMSoP, Nov 01 '16 at 17:29

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '16 at 16:09

7

You can use the attributes() function on the node to get it's attributes:

$xml_str = '<xml>
    <node>
        <someTag cp="c2">content</someTag>
    </node>
</xml>';
$res = simplexml_load_string($xml_str);

$items = $res->xpath("//someTag");
var_dump((string) $items[0]->attributes()->cp);

The returned element is an SimpleXMLElement, so in order to use it I converted it to string (using the (string) cast).

answered Nov 01 '16 at 16:09

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Yes, it works! Thank you ) – Miroslav Nov 01 '16 at 16:31
This is unnecessarily complex for most use cases. The simple version is `var_dump((string) $res->someTag['cp'])` – IMSoP Nov 01 '16 at 17:31
Oops, sorry, misread the example; it would be `$res->node->someTag['cp']`. You get the idea, I hope. – IMSoP Nov 01 '16 at 17:42

Get an attribute value using SimpleXML for PHP

1 Answers1