Question

I’m having a real issue trying to parse an XML file that is structured in the following way using PHP.
As you might notice, they are key->value pairs, but it could be key->string or key->data etc.

Anyone got an idea? I’d really appreciate the help.

Also, data is from an external interface and I have no control over it’s formatting.

<array>
    <dict>
        <key>name</key>
        <string>John</string>
        <key>surname</key>
        <string>Smith</string>
        <key>Car</key>
        <string>Ford</string>
        <key>picture</key>
        <data>AAAA====</data>
        <key>age</key>
        <string>32</string>
    </dict>
</array>

I would like to somehow re-format the data with something simple, such as:

array
  -dict
    -name=John
    -surname=smith

etc.

Answer 1

Take a look at simplexml class: http://php.net/simplexml

Also, XML has a standard, so even though your XML is coming from external interface, they should be a standard, valid XML.

EDIT

<?php
$xmlstr = <<<XML
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>name</key>
        <string>John</string>
        <key>surname</key>
        <string>Smith</string>
        <key>Car</key>
        <string>Ford</string>
        <key>picture</key>
        <data>AAAA====</data>
        <key>age</key>
        <string>32</string>
    </dict>
</array>
XML
;

$tmp = simplexml_load_string($xmlstr);
$var = (array)$tmp->dict;
$keys = array();
foreach($tmp->dict->children() as $k => $v) {
        if($k == 'key') $key = (string)$v;
        else $keys[$key] = (string)$v;
}

print_r($keys);