Question

I need to extract some data from a XML fetched online and to create a JSON from the result.

Here is a simplified version of the issue I encounter:

$XML=simplexml_load_file("http://somewhere.on.the.net/my.xml");
$result = array();

$tmpp = $XML->S->S["time"];
echo $tmpp.'<br/>';;

$result['DATE'] = $tmpp;
echo json_encode($result);

I get:

2012-05-29
{"DATE":{"0":"2012-05-29"}}

and I want:

{"DATE":"2012-05-29"}

How can I achieve this? Thanks.

Update

Here is the structure of the XML:

<g:e>
<S>
 <S time="2012-05-29">
   <S info1="a" info2="b"/>
   <S info1="d" info2="m"/>
   <S info1="q" info2="l"/>
   ...
 </S>
 <S time="2011-04-09">
   <S info1="a" info2="z"/>
   ...
   </S>
 </S>
 ...
</S>
</g:e>

Answer 1

Looks like you may need to be getting the string value from the XML node:

// Cast the value to a string.
$tmpp = (string)$XML->S->S["time"];

It looks like a bare date value when you echo it because SimpleXML implements a custom __toString() on the object, but if you var_dump($XML->S->S["time"]) you will see there’s more to it than just the date string.