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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T15:07:02+00:00

I have an XML document with a basic structure like this: <?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8

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I have an XML document with a basic structure like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<records timestamp="1264777862">
<record></record>
<record></record>
<record></record>
<record></record>
</records>

I’ve been using the following so far:

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->load('myfile.xml');
$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
$timestamp = $xpath->query("/records@timestamp");

But this gives me an invalid expression error.

What would be the correct PHP/XPath expression syntax to use to obtain the timestamp attribute of the root?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    What is your existing PHP code? Are you using DOMDocument? SimpleXML?

    The correct Xpath expression is ‘string(/records/@timestamp)’

    For SimpleXML see http://php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.xpath.php
    e.g.

    <?php
$string = <<<XML
<records timestamp="1264777862">
<record></record>
<record></record>
<record></record>
<record></record>
</records>

XML;

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($string);

$result = $xml->xpath('string(/records/@timestamp)');

while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
    echo $node,"\n";
}

?>

    And for DOMXPath see http://www.php.net/manual/en/domxpath.evaluate.php

    <?php

$doc = new DOMDocument;

$doc->load('book.xml');

$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);

// our query is relative to the records node
$query = 'string(/records/@timestamp)';

$timestamp = $xpath->evaluate($query);
echo $timestamp ."\n";

?>

    EDIT
    See edit above. Need to cast to string in the xpath expression

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