Question

I came across this function of converting a SimpleXML Object to an array here:

/**
 * function object2array - A simpler way to transform the result into an array 
 *   (requires json module).
 *
 * This function is part of the PHP manual.
 *
 * The PHP manual text and comments are covered by the Creative Commons 
 * Attribution 3.0 License, copyright (c) the PHP Documentation Group
 *
 * @author  Diego Araos, diego at klapmedia dot com
 * @date    2011-02-05 04:57 UTC
 * @link    http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.simplexml-load-string.php#102277
 * @license http://www.php.net/license/index.php#doc-lic
 * @license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
 * @license CC-BY-3.0 <http://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-3.0>
 */
function object2array($object)
{
    return json_decode(json_encode($object), TRUE); 
}

So my adoption for an XML strings is like:

function xmlstring2array($string)
{
    $xml   = simplexml_load_string($string, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);

    $array = json_decode(json_encode($xml), TRUE);

    return $array;
}

It works pretty well, but it seems a bit hacky? Is there a more efficient/robust way of doing this?

I know that the SimpleXML Object is close enough to an array because it makes use of the ArrayAccess interface in PHP but it still doesn’t work great to use as an array with multi-dimensional arrays i.e. looping.

Thanks all for any help

Answer 1

I found this in the PHP manual comments:

/**
 * function xml2array
 *
 * This function is part of the PHP manual.
 *
 * The PHP manual text and comments are covered by the Creative Commons 
 * Attribution 3.0 License, copyright (c) the PHP Documentation Group
 *
 * @author  k dot antczak at livedata dot pl
 * @date    2011-04-22 06:08 UTC
 * @link    http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.simplexml.php#103617
 * @license http://www.php.net/license/index.php#doc-lic
 * @license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
 * @license CC-BY-3.0 <http://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-3.0>
 */
function xml2array ( $xmlObject, $out = array () )
{
    foreach ( (array) $xmlObject as $index => $node )
        $out[$index] = ( is_object ( $node ) ) ? xml2array ( $node ) : $node;

    return $out;
}

It could help you. However, if you convert XML to an array you will loose all attributes that might be present, so you cannot go back to XML and get the same XML.