Question

I have a piece of code that calls an external file and returns the results from a database as an xml output as below:

 $file = 'http://computers.mysite.co.uk/vrm.xml?apikey=**********&vid=Check&vrm='.$reg;
  if(!$xml = simplexml_load_file($file))
 exit('Failed to open '.$file);
  print_r($id);

This returns the results like this:

     <computers sid="1234">
      <computer id="253406" name="computer name)" model_group="Microsofth" start_year="2005" end_year="2009">
        <system id="969623" capacity="3.4"/>
         <developer id="64" name="intel"/>
            <machine id="8" name="P" etype="P"/>
           <products>
           <product id="9" name="computer screwdriver" datasheet="" packshot=""/>
         <product id="16" name="Screwdriver Crosshead" datasheet="" packshot=""/>
       </products>
     </computer>
   </computers>

Instead of showing the results like this, is it possible to return them or change them into basic php variables such as:

   $compputer_sid
   $computer_id
   $system_id

and so on.

Answer 1

UPDATE: Doh, you’re already using SimpleXML.

you can access nodes with syntax like this:

$xml['sid'];//<computers sid="1234">

Try:

echo $xml['sid'];
foreach($xml->computer as $computer){
    echo $computer['id'];
    echo $computer->system['id'];
}