PHP: SimpleXMLElement dose not parse href attributes of link tag

Question

I want to parse xxm file like the below. but the result does not have any attributes include href for first "a" tag.

<?php
$xmlContent = <<<XML
    <ol>
        <li>
            <a href="Untitled-1-1.xhtml">1</a>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a href="Untitled-1-2.xhtml"/>
        </li>
    </ol>
XML;
    $xml = new \SimpleXMLElement($xmlContent);

    print_r($xml);

?>

Result:

[li] => Array
    (
        [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
            (
                [a] => 1
            )

        [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
            (
                [a] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                    (
                        [@attributes] => Array
                            (
                                [href] => Untitled-1-2.xhtml
                            )

                    )

            )

    )

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 28 '20 at 11:48

1

You can't reliably use print_r (or var_dump, etc) to inspect a SimpleXML element. The output can be missing a lot of the values. See here if you want a more thorough explanation. Other tools are available for debugging these objects, if you do want a full view of them.

But just jump into the object using its API, and the values will be there. If you want the href value of the first link, it's here:

$xml->li[0]->a['href'];

// Untitled-1-1.xhtml

See https://3v4l.org/BOVfB

answered Jun 28 '20 at 11:48

iainn

16,826
9
33
40

And another question, How can check the href attribute exists?! – elyas.m Jun 28 '20 at 11:54
1

You should just be able to use `isset` - e.g. `isset($xml->li[0]->a['href'])` – iainn Jun 28 '20 at 12:01

PHP: SimpleXMLElement dose not parse href attributes of link tag

1 Answers1