Share XML in PHP

Question

I have merged xml with the root element and several children of the element. Something like that

<root> <item>test1</item> <item>test2</item> </root> 

What I want is an easy way to parse xml and create an array of xml strings from elements.

 $arrXml[0] = '<item>test1</item>'; $arrXml[1] = '<item>test2</item>'; 

I am looking for an elegant solution, not any solution.

Answer 1

Well, as mentioned in the comments on your question, I'm not sure if this is really what you should do , but since I cannot approve SimpleXml and I don't want people to think about it the only way, here's how to do it

with the DOM :

 $arrXml = array(); $dom = new DOMDocument; $dom->loadXML( $xml ); foreach( $dom->getElementsByTagName( 'item' ) as $item ) { $arrXml[] = $dom->saveXML( $item ); } print_r( $arrXml ); 

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with XMLReader :

 $arrXml = array(); $reader = new XmlReader; $reader->xml( $xml ); while( $reader->read() ) { if( $reader->localName === 'item' && $reader->nodeType === 1 ) { $arrXml[] = $reader->readOuterXml(); } } print_r( $arrXml ); 

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and XMLParser* :

 xml_parse_into_struct(xml_parser_create(), $xml, $nodes); $xmlArr = array(); foreach($nodes as $node) { if($node['tag'] === 'ITEM') { $arrXml[] = "<item>{$node['value']}</item>"; } } print_r($arrXml); 

^{* This can also be accomplished with callbacks called when an ITEM element is encountered. There will be more code, but rather flexible.}

Please note that all of the above may require some tweaking depending on your real XML.

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Given that the XML in your question (which is most likely just an example) is simple and straightforward to use, you can also use explode() :

 $arrXml = array_map( 'trim', array_filter( explode( PHP_EOL, $xml ), function( $line ) { return substr( $line, 0, 6 ) === '<item>'; } )); print_r( $arrXml ); 

or Regex (read below)

 preg_match_all('#<item>.*</item>#', $xml, $arrXml); print_r($arrXml[0]); 

Disclaimer Now, to make sure that you are not starting to parse XML with regular expressions or Explode regularly: the last two approaches are only possible if your markup is really clearly defined as you show it.

Answer 2

There are some good code examples in the comments of the SimpleXml manual page . I'm sure you can do something from the objectsIntoArray() sample.

Answer 3

Have you looked at SimpleXML ?

For example:

 $string = " <root> <item>test1</item> <item>test2</item> </root> "; $xml = simplexml_load_string($string);