Question

I’m new to XML and have so far managed to obtain the root node of an XML using this in php…

function xmlRootNode($xmlfile){
    $xml = simplexml_load_string(file_get_contents($xmlfile));
    $xml = $xml->getName();
    echo $xml;
}

And what I now want to do is use that root node to find out the name of its child node.
For example, a file with the below would output ‘food’ as the root using the above function. How would I now use that to return its childs name ‘fruit’?

<food>
  <fruit>
    <type>apples</type>
  </fruit>
</food>

Ultimately what I’m trying to do is find out the child node name of the root node so I can then use it in another function that counts how many there are. Been googling and messing around with different ideas but think I’m missing a simple process somewhere so any ideas would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try

/* get list of fruits under food */
$fruits = $xml->children();

/* or treat the $xml as array */
foreach ($xml as $fruit)
{
   /* your processing */
}

Additional, the below is redundant,

$xml = simplexml_load_string(file_get_contents($xmlfile));

switch it to

$xml = simplexml_load_file($xmlfile);