Question

I have some xml that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
    <data>
<items>
    <item><timestamp>2011-07-11T09:01:42Z</timestamp><title><![CDATA[ some data here ]]></title><link>http://twitter.com/aurl</link></item>
    <item><timestamp>2011-05-11T09:01:42Z</timestamp><title><![CDATA[ some data here ]]></title><link>http://twitter.com/aurlhere</link></item>
</items>

and I’m trying to loop over it and add it to an array:

 foreach($xml->items->item as $e) {
              $feedData['timestamp'] = $e->timestamp;
            $feedData['title'] = $e->title;
            $feedData['link'] = $e->link;
            $feedData['type'] = $e->type;
        }

    print_r($feedData);

The xml is there and if I put an echo in the foreach I get back 10 responses (whcih are how many items I have) but when I print the array out all I get is one line (which is the last entry in the xml doc).

Array ( [timestamp] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [0] => 2011-07-08T08:05:19Z ) [title] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( ) [link] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [0] => http://twitter.com.aurl ) [type] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( ) ) 

I suspoect I’m overwriting the array on each loop. But why ? It should be adding to the array. Sorry my php isn’t great…hence what Is suspect is a bit of a stupid question.

Answer 1

Well, there is only one $feedData array and you are always setting the value for some specific keys, e.g. $feedData['timestamp']. How do you think this should add to the array? Keys are unique, the same key cannot appear twice, so yes, you are just overwriting the values.

It seems you want an array of arrays:

$feedData = array();

foreach($xml->items->item as $e) {
    $feedData[] = array(
        'timestamp' => $e->timestamp;
        'title' => $e->title;
        'link' => $e->link;
        'type' => $e->type;
    );
}

Have a look at the array manual ^[docs] for more information about arrays.