Question

I have a string with xml-like data:

<header>Article header</header>
<description>This article is about you</description>
<text>some <b>html</b> text</text>

I need to parse it into variables/object/array “header”, “description”, “text”.

What is the best way to do this? I tried $vars = simplexml_load_string($content), but it does not work, because it is not 100% pure xml (no <?xml...).
So, should I use preg_match? Is it the only way?

Answer 1

Your XML string looks like (though may or may not be) an XML document fragment. PHP can work with this using the DOMDocumentFragment class.

$doc  = new DOMDocument;
$frag = $doc->createDocumentFragment();
$frag->appendXML($content);

$parsed = array();
foreach ($frag->childNodes as $element) {
    if ($element->nodeType === XML_ELEMENT_NODE) {
        $parsed[$element->nodeName] = $element->textContent;
    }
}

echo $parsed['description']; // This article is about you