Question

I have this form given:

<item><parameter name="a">3</parameter></item>

Is it possible to read the “a” with SimpleXML?

I have already tried $xml->item->parameter->getName(); but it only returns “parameter”.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes, use the attributes() method from SimpleXML

SimpleXML::attributes()

echo (string)$xml->item->parameter->attributes()->name;

codepad example

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Alternative solution is using xpath()

SimpleXML::xpath()

$name = $xml->xpath('item/parameter/@name');
echo $name[0];

codepad example

xpath() always returns array (or false in case of error), this why you need to assign it to a var, or if you have php >= 5.4 you can use array dereferencing

echo $xml->xpath('item/parameter/@name')[0];