Question

It looks like there are many problems with simpleXML in PHP. I’m running the latest version of php on Windows and I just can not get the basic examples of simpleXML to work as in the documentation.

My xml file is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<programme> 
  <title>Billy Bushwaka</title> 
  <episodeNumber>2</episodeNumber> 
  <description>Billy Bushwaka entertains</description> 
  <url>play.swf</url> 
</programme> 

My PHP program is:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("local.xml");

$result = $xml->xpath("//programme");
echo "Title: " . $result . "</br>";
?>

All I get is the following:

Title: Array

How can I get “Title: Billy Bushwaka”?

There are no repeats of XML data so I do not want to use arrays.

Answer 1

SimpleXML 101

1. First of all, always name your PHP variables after the node they represent.

   // the root node is <programme/>
   $programme = simplexml_load_file("local.xml");
   

2. Access to children (nodes) as if they were object properties.

   echo $programme->title;
   

3. If there are multiple children using the same name, you can specify their 0-based position

   // first <title/> child
   echo $programme->title[0];
   
   // create or change the value of the second <title/> child
   $programme->title[1] = 'Second title';
   

4. Access to attributes as if they were array keys

   // <mynode attr="attribute value" />
   echo $mynode['attr'];
   

5. XPath always returns an array.

---

Back to your case, the best way to access that <title /> node would be

$programme = simplexml_load_file("local.xml");
echo "Title: " . $programme->title;