Question

I’ve had a look round similar articles such as this one and I can’t quite get it to work, quite possible I’m just misunderstanding.

I’ve got a simple script which parses a bit of xml and prints out specific fields – what I’m having trouble doing is accessing the data of SimpleXMLElement Objects.

XML (simplified for clarity)

<channel>
  <item> 
    <title><![CDATA[Title is in here ...]]></title> 
    <description>Our description is in here!</description>
  </item>
</channel>

PHP

$url = "file.xml";
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);

foreach ($xml->channel->item as $item) {
$articles = array();
$articles['title'] = $item->title;
$articles['description'] = $item->description;
}

Up to this point, everything seems ok. I end up with an array of content which I can confirm with print_r, this is what I get back:

Array
(
    [title] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [0] => Title is in here ...
        )

    [description] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [0] => Our description is in here!
        )
)

The key question

How do I then access [title][0] or [description][0]?

I’ve tried a couple of variations with no success, most likely a rookie error somewhere!

foreach ($articles as $article) {
        echo $article->title;
    }

and

foreach ($articles as $article) {
        echo $article['title'][0];
    }

and

foreach ($articles as $article) {
        echo $article['title'];
    }

Answer 1

If you really don’t want to simply pass the SimpleXMLelement but put the values in an array first….

<?php
// $xml = simplexml_load_file($url, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
$xlm = getData();

$articles = array();
foreach ($xml->channel->item as $item) {
  // with (string)$item->title you get rid of the SimpleXMLElements and store plain strings
  // but you could also keep the SimpleXMLElements here - the output is still the same.
  $articles[] = array(
    'title'=>(string)$item->title, 
    'description'=>(string)$item->description
  );
}

// ....
foreach( $articles as $a ) {
  echo $a['title'], ' - ', $a['description'], "\n";
}

function getData() {
  return new SimpleXMLElement('<foo><channel>
    <item> 
      <title><![CDATA[Title1 is in here ...]]></title> 
      <description>Our description1 is in here!</description>
    </item>
    <item> 
      <title><![CDATA[Title2 is in here ...]]></title> 
      <description>Our description2 is in here!</description>
    </item>
  </channel></foo>');
}

prints

Title1 is in here ... - Our description1 is in here!
Title2 is in here ... - Our description2 is in here!