[RESOLVED] SimpleXML question

[phpSimon]

Hi all

I'm trying to parse some XML which exists in a variable.

The string looks a bit like this, edited for simplicity.

<Event editCode="5"></Event><Event editCode="10"></Event><Event editCode="0"></Event><Event editCode="0"></Event></CList>

The ONLY data I need from this string is the first editCode (5 in the above example).

If I do:

$xmldatanew = simplexml_load_string($xmldata);
var_dump($xmldatanew);

I get:

object(SimpleXMLElement)#1 (1) {
["Event"]=>
array(4) {
[0]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#2 (0) {
}
[1]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#3 (0) {
}
[2]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#4 (0) {
}
[3]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#5 (0) {
}
}
}

How do I extract just the first item I need?

Many thanks

[big_nerd]

phpSimon,

You can see many examples in the PHP Manual Page

An object can be accessed similary to an array, you can also convert the object to an array.

This is the case with a SimpleXML object, and other objects may vary:

// for simplicity, we are assuming all XML info is in $xmldata
$xmlObject = simplexml_load_string($xmldata);
$xmlArray = (array)$xmlObject;

echo "Object as Example:<br />";
printf('<pre>&#37;s</pre>',print_r($xmlObject,true));

echo "Array as Example:<br />";
printf('<pre>%s</pre>',print_r($xmlArray,true));

echo $xmlObject->Event[0];
echo $xmlArray['Event'][0];

// 0 = 1st, 1 = 2nd, etc etc

The array assignment isn't recursive to the best of my knowledge, but i could be wrong, so if the XML file has child nodes they will still retain as SimpleXML Objects, however can still be accessed as I mentioned above.

[phpSimon]

Thank you for the assistance!

I'm new to PHP and particularly to XML parsing; I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong in the initial parsing or I needed to transform the XML to get the values inside the tags.

From your reply it looks to me as if the data is in the array and haven't handled that yet - I just thought the data I wanted would at least be shown in the var_dump, but perhaps I should be dumping the array instead!

Simon

[big_nerd]

I am sorry I was mistaken when I read this, I completely missed the editcode thing.

// for simplicity, we are assuming all XML info is in $xmldata
$xmlObject = simplexml_load_string($xmldata);

echo $xmlObject->Event[0]['editCode'];

I am just not with it today 🙂

SimpleXML Element attributes are accessed similar to accessing a multi-dimensional array.

echo $object->Node['attribute'];
echo $object->Note->ChildNode['attribute'];

If you walk through every example from the webpage, and try to see what they do to your XML example, you can see what it comes up with.

[phpSimon]

Thanks again - I used this part of your code:

<php>
$xmlobject = simplexml_load_string($xmldata);
$editCode = $xmldataobject->Event[0]['editCode'];
echo $editCode;
</php>

Works perfectly!

[big_nerd]

Excellent!

If you can, please mark this thread Resolved using the 'Thread Tools' so that others who search the forums can quickly see/learn from this.

[phpSimon]

OK will do; it was an excellent solution. Thanks again.