Question

I’m trying to access specific parts of a XML file with PHP (simplexml) without looping through. I just want to access a specific field. But how? This is the structure of the xml file:

<collection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim">
    <record>
        <datafield tag="010" ind1=" " ind2=" ">
            <subfield code="a">96174405</subfield>
        </datafield>
        <datafield tag="035" ind1=" " ind2=" ">
            <subfield code="a">(OCoLC)ocm34158924</subfield>
        </datafield>
    </record>
</collection>

For example, how would I print 96174405?

print_r ($collection->record->datafield[0]->subfield);

That doesn’t seem to work. How do I account for the attributes?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Cast to string when using print_r():

<?php

$collection = simplexml_load_string('<collection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim">
    <record>
        <datafield tag="010" ind1=" " ind2=" ">
            <subfield code="a">96174405</subfield>
        </datafield>
        <datafield tag="035" ind1=" " ind2=" ">
            <subfield code="a">(OCoLC)ocm34158924</subfield>
        </datafield>
    </record>
</collection>');

print_r( (string)$collection->record->datafield[0]->subfield );

The SimpleXML extension objects are created dynamically.

Clarification:

If you don’t cast to string, print_r() will display this instead:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [@attributes] => Array
        (
            [code] => a
        )

    [0] => 96174405
)

Thus the recommendation.