Question

i need to access a simplexml object using a string. ie.

$x->a->b = 'obj';
$s = 'a->b';
echo $x->$s;

but it doesn’t seem to work…

please help!

🙂

Answer 1

you could use references:

$s =& $x->a->b;

or, if you want the string approach, build up the reference step by step:

function getRef($base, $str) {
    $out = $base;
    $parts = explode("->", $str);

    foreach ($parts as $p) {
        $out = $out->$p;
    }

    return $out;
}

getRef($x, "a->b");