Question

I was wondering if it is possible to open an xml file as a plain text file so I can read in each line and manipulate the text?

Answer 1

$xml_file = '/var/www/file.xml';
$contents = file_get_contents($xml_file); // Dumps the entire file into a single string
$contents = file($xml_file); // Dumps each line into an array

However, I would recommend using simplexml_load_file() (even though you said you wanted to avoid it) because there is no guarantee as to how the xml will be formatted. It could all be on a single line or formatted with line-breaks in unexpected places.