Question

I am using a cloud based contact management system API with PHP library that returns the following code when I use print_r($xml) (in View Source) when searching for a contact:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[id12345] => SimpleXMLElement Object
    (
        [id] => 12345
        [name] => Bob Smith
        [parentid] => 51214064
        [parentcn] => EGCTeam
        [flagged] => SimpleXMLElement Object
            (
            )

        [created] => 2012-08-24T18:39:22+00:00
        [viewed] => 2012-08-28T10:39:49+00:00
        [updated] => 2012-08-28T10:41:05+00:00
    )

[count] => 1
[status] => success
)

Normally I would use this code to access the “name” field:

$contactName = $xml->id12345->name

But since the first node includes the ID that I don’t know, how do I access the values of the contact? I tried this:

$contactName = $xml->children()->name

but it didn’t work (came out blank). Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use SimpleXMLElement::getName function to get the name of the SimpleXML element and parse the id from the name by getting the string after id.

For example (if $response is the SimpleXML element):

foreach ($response->children() as $child)
{
    $name = $child->getName();
    $id = substr($name, 2);
    // Do stuff here with id or access node by $name //
}