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PHP : Function Reference : SimpleXML functions : simplexml_load_string

simplexml_load_string

Interprets a string of XML into an object (PHP 5)
object simplexml_load_string ( string data [, string class_name [, int options [, string ns [, bool is_prefix]]]] )

Example 2263. Interpret an XML string

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<?php

$string = <<<XML
<?xml version='1.0'?> 

<document>

 <title>Forty What?</title>

 <from>Joe</from>

 <to>Jane</to>

 <body>

  I know that's the answer -- but what's the question?

 </body>

</document>
XML;

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);

var_dump($xml);
?>

The above example will output:

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SimpleXMLElement Object

(

  [title] => Forty What?

  [from] => Joe

  [to] => Jane

  [body] =>

   I know that's the answer -- but what's the question?

)

At this point, you can go about using $xml->body and such.

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Code Examples / Notes » simplexml load string

youx_free_fr

While needing to add an xml subtree to an existing simplexml object, I noticed that simplexml_load_string fails with strings like <emptynode></emptynode> I needed to use dom instead of simplexml to bypass this problem and work with any kind of xml strings.

m dot ament

Warning: The parsing of XML-data will stop when reaching character 0. Please avoid this character in your XML-data.

hattori

Theres a problem with the below workaround when serializing fields containing html CDATA. For any other content type then HTML try to modfiy function parseCDATA. Just add these lines before serializing. This is also a workaround for this bug http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=42001 <?PHP if(strpos($content, '<![CDATA[')) { function parseCDATA($data) { return htmlentities($data[1]); } $content = preg_replace_callback( '#<!\[CDATA\[(.*)\]\]>#', 'parseCDATA', str_replace("\n", " ", $content) ); } ?>

seems like simplexml has a line-length restriction - fails if a largeish XML doc with no linebreaks is passed as a string or file. h

nbijnens

Please note that not all LIBXML options are supported with the options argument. For instance LIBXML_XINCLUDE does not work. But there is however a work around: <?php $xml = new DOMDocument(); $xml->loadXML ($XMLString); $xml->xinclude(); $xml = simplexml_import_dom($xml); ?>

php

It's worth noting that in the example above, $xml->body will actually return an object of type SimpleXMLElement, not a string, e.g. SimpleXMLElement Object ( [0] => this is the text in the body tag ) If you want to get a string out of it you must explicitly cast it using (string) or double quotes, or pass $xml->body (or whatever attribute you want to access) to any function that returns a string, such as urldecode() or trim().

hattori

If you want to serialize and unserialize SimpleXMLElement objects for caching, you need to transform the SimpleXMLElement object into a standard class object before unserializing. This is only if you want to cache converted data, the functionallity of the SimpleXMLElement will not be held. $content = '<SomeXML....' $serialized = str_replace( array('O:16:"SimpleXMLElement":0:{}', 'O:16:"SimpleXMLElement":'), array('s:0:"";', 'O:8:"stdClass":'), serialize(simplexml_load_string($content)) ); $unserialized = unserialize($serialized);

paul

If you have PHP > 5.1 and LibXML > 2.6, use this function call to have simplexml convert CDATA into plain text. simplexml_load_string($xmlstring, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA); Too bad, so sad with PHP < 5.1.

pedro

Attention: simplexml_load_string has a problem with entities other than (<, >, &, " and '). Use numeric character references instead!

david somerset

Another option for having simplexml convert CDATA into plain text is to simply type cast the result to string. Here's an example: $xmlRoot = simplexml_load_string('<?xml version="1.0"?> <tvshows> <show> <name>The Simpsons</name> </show> <show> <name><![CDATA[Lois & Clark]]></name> </show> </tvshows>'); $show = array(); foreach($xmlRoot as $val){ $show[] = (string) $val->name; }

mindpower

A simple extension that adds a method for retrieving a specific attribute: <?php class simple_xml_extended extends SimpleXMLElement { public function Attribute($name) { foreach($this->Attributes() as $key=>$val) { if($key == $name) return (string)$val; } } } $xml = simplexml_load_string(' <xml> <dog type="poodle" owner="Mrs Smith">Rover</dog> </xml>', 'simple_xml_extended'); echo $xml->dog->Attribute('type'); ?> outputs 'poodle' I prefer to use this technique rather than typecasting attributes.

Change Language

SimpleXMLElement->addAttribute()
SimpleXMLElement->addChild()
SimpleXMLElement->asXML()
SimpleXMLElement->attributes()
SimpleXMLElement->children()
SimpleXMLElement->__construct()
SimpleXMLElement->getDocNamespaces()
SimpleXMLElement->getName()
SimpleXMLElement->getNamespaces()
SimpleXMLElement->registerXPathNamespace()
SimpleXMLElement->xpath()
simplexml_import_dom
simplexml_load_file
simplexml_load_string