Question

I need to load an XML source using Simple XML, duplicate an existing node with all his children, then customize an attribute of this new node before rendering XML. Any suggestion?

Answer 1

SimpleXML can’t do this, so you’ll have to use DOM. The good news is that DOM and SimpleXML are two sides of the same coin, libxml. So no matter whether you’re using SimpleXML or DOM, you’re working on the same tree. Here’s an example:

$thing = simplexml_load_string(
    '<thing>
        <node n="1"><child/></node>
    </thing>'
);

$dom_thing = dom_import_simplexml($thing);
$dom_node  = dom_import_simplexml($thing->node);
$dom_new   = $dom_thing->appendChild($dom_node->cloneNode(true));

$new_node  = simplexml_import_dom($dom_new);
$new_node['n'] = 2;

echo $thing->asXML();

---

If you’re doing that kind of thing a lot, you can try SimpleDOM, which is an extension to SimpleXML that lets you use DOM’s methods directly, without converting from and to DOM objects.

include 'SimpleDOM.php';
$thing = simpledom_load_string(
    '<thing>
        <node n="1"><child/></node>
    </thing>'
);

$new = $thing->appendChild($thing->node->cloneNode(true));
$new['n'] = 2;

echo $thing->asXML();