How to parse and process XML data in PHP
Sometimes working with 3rd party API, you may get response in the xml format instead of json. XML is a extensible markup language like HTML. XML is used to store and send data like json. PHP already have SimpleXML class to handle xml data. The simplexml_load_string() function in PHP is used to handle an XML data and returns an object.
Syntax:
simplexml_load_string($xml, $class_name, $options, $ns, $is_prefix);
Where:
xml is xml formated data
$class_name is optional parameter so that simplexml_load_string() will return an object of the specified class.
$options is also optional parameter for Libxml parameters is set by specifying the option and 1 or 0.
$ns is optional prefix or URI.
$is_prefix is optional boolean value true if ns is a prefix, false if it's a URI; defaults to false.
Let's have look bellow example.
<?php
$string = <<<XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mail>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<subject>Greeting</subject>
<body>What's up?</body>
</mail>
XML;
$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);
print_r($xml);
The above example will print:
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[to] => Tove
[from] => Joe
[subject] => Greeting
[body] => What's up?
)
You can access its property with single arrow key:
print_r($xml->body); // What's up?
If you want to convert xml to PHP array, just convert object to json object and then convert it to PHP array.
<?php
$string = <<<XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mail>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<subject>Greeting</subject>
<body>What's up?</body>
</mail>
XML;
$xml_object = simplexml_load_string($string);
$xml_json = json_encode($xml_object);
$xml_array = json_decode($xml_json, true);
print_r($xml_array);
This will print below output.
Array
(
[to] => Tov
[from] => Jani
[subject] => Greeting
[body] => What's up?
)
This way you can handle xml string data and convert it to PHP array or object.
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