Question

I’m trying to parse xml data by calling url via file_get_contents() in php. The result is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<RESPONSE>
<SINGLE>
<KEY name="sitename"><VALUE>RedCross Test</VALUE>
</KEY>
<KEY name="username"><VALUE>test1</VALUE>
</KEY>
<KEY name="firstname"><VALUE>Test1</VALUE>
</KEY>
<KEY name="lastname"><VALUE>testTest1</VALUE>
</KEY>
</SINGLE>
</RESPONSE>

Here is the procedure:

<?php

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

$xml_obj = file_get_contents("http://localhost/example/webservice/rest/server.php?wstoken=".$token."&function=get_info");

$data = $xml_obj->SINGLE->KEY[2]->VALUE;
echo $data;

?>

The response is: error on line 2 at column 1: Notice: Trying to get property of non-object on line 7. Could someone advise me?

Answer 1

The error is stating that $xml_obj is not an object. That’s because it’s not. It’s simply a var storing the contents (as a string) of the response from file_get_contents.

Instead of:

$xml_obj = file_get_contents("http://localhost/example/webservice/rest/server.php?wstoken=".$token."&function=get_info");

Try:

$xml_obj = simplexml_load_file("http://localhost/example/webservice/rest/server.php?wstoken=".$token."&function=get_info");

Or, if you need to use the contents for other stuff and want it in a separate variable:

$contents = file_get_contents("http://localhost/example/webservice/rest/server.php?wstoken=".$token."&function=get_info");

$xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->loadXML( $contents );