Question

I am trying to loop though some XML and preform an action if an attribute value did or didn’t match the value it had on the previous iteration of the loop.

The incoming data is already sorted by the class.

Here is some sample XML and code

<character_list>
    <character id="00001">
        <name first="Name1"/>
        <type class="Class A" classid="1"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00002">
        <name first="Name2"/>
        <type class="Class A" classid="1"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00003">
        <name first="Name3"/>
        <type class="Class B" classid="2"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00004">
        <name first="Name4"/>
        <type class="Class B" classid="2"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00005">
        <name first="Name5"/>
        <type class="Class B" classid="2"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00006">
        <name first="Name6"/>
        <type class="Class C" classid="3"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00007">
        <name first="Name7"/>
        <type class="Class D" classid="4"/>
    </character>
    <character id="00008">
        <name first="Name8"/>
        <type class="Class D" classid="4"/>
    </character>
</character_list>

Here is my code

<?php
$query = "data.xml";
$xml = file_get_contents($query);

try {
        $dataobj = NEW SimpleXMLElement($xml);
}

catch(Exception $e) {
        echo "Parsing error!  ".$e->getMessage()." in ".basename($e->getFile()).":".$e->getLine()."!";
        exit;
}

$lastclass = 0;

foreach ($dataobj as $xmldata) {

        $currentclass = $xmldata->type['classid'];

        if ($lastclass == $currentclass) {
                echo $xmldata->name['first']." ";
        }
        else
        {
                echo "<br>";
                echo $xmldata->type['class']." - ";
                echo $xmldata->name['first']." ";
        }

        $lastclass = $xmldata->type['classid'];
}


?>

Output from the code

Class A - Name1 
Class A - Name2 
Class B - Name3 
Class B - Name4 
Class B - Name5 
Class C - Name6 
Class D - Name7 
Class D - Name8

Expected output

Class A - Name1 Name2 
Class B - Name3 Name4 Name5 
Class C - Name6 
Class D - Name7 Name8

Can anyone see what I am doing wrong and how to correct it?

Answer 1

Just cast values to strings like that:

foreach ($dataobj as $xmldata) {

    $currentclass = (string) $xmldata->type['classid'];

    if ($lastclass == $currentclass) {
            echo $xmldata->name['first']." ";
    }
    else
    {
            echo "<br>";
            echo $xmldata->type['class']." - ";
            echo $xmldata->name['first']." ";
    }

    $lastclass = (string) $xmldata->type['classid'];
}

Without casting you are comparing simplexml objects.