Question

ok this is driving me crazy.
I have been trying to parse a xml file into a specific array or object so I can compare it to a similar file to test for differences.
However I have had no luck. I have been attempting to use SimpleXMLIterator and SimpleXMLElement to do this.
Here are some samples:

<xml>
 //This is the first record of 1073
    <viddb>
        <movies>1074</movies>
        <movie>
            <title>10.5</title>
            <origtitle>10.5</origtitle>
            <year>2004</year>
            <genre>Disaster</genre>
            <release></release>
            <mpaa></mpaa>
            <director>John Lafia</director>
            <producers>Howard Braunstein, Jeffrey Herd</producers>
            <actors>Kim Delaney, Fred Ward, Ivan Sergei</actors>
            <description>An earthquake reaching a 10.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, strikes the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. A large portion of land falls into the ocean, and the situation is worsened by aftershocks and tsunami.</description>
            <path>E:\www\Media\Videos\Disaster\10.5.mp4</path>
            <length>164</length>
            <size>3648</size>
            <resolution>640x272</resolution>
            <framerate>29.97</framerate>
            <videocodec>AVC</videocodec>
            <videobitrate>2966</videobitrate>
            <label>Roku Media</label>
            <poster>images/10.5.jpg</poster>
        </movie>

Here is the object this record produces using $iter = new SimpleXMLIterator($xml, 0, TRUE);

object(SimpleXMLIterator)#71 (1) {
  ["viddb"] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#72 (2) {
    ["movies"] => string(4) "1074"
    ["movie"] => array(1074) {
      [0] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#73 (19) {
        ["title"] => string(4) "10.5"
        ["origtitle"] => string(4) "10.5"
        ["year"] => string(4) "2004"
        ["genre"] => string(8) "Disaster"
        ["release"] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#1158 (0) {
        }
        ["mpaa"] => object(SimpleXMLIterator)#1159 (0) {
        }
        ["director"] => string(10) "John Lafia"
        ["producers"] => string(31) "Howard Braunstein, Jeffrey Herd"
        ["actors"] => string(35) "Kim Delaney, Fred Ward, Ivan Sergei"
        ["description"] => string(212) "An earthquake reaching a 10.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, strikes the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. A large portion of land falls into the ocean, and the situation is worsened by aftershocks and tsunami."
        ["path"] => string(37) "E:\www\Media\Videos\Disaster\10.5.mp4"
        ["length"] => string(3) "164"
        ["size"] => string(4) "3648"
        ["resolution"] => string(7) "640x272"
        ["framerate"] => string(5) "29.97"
        ["videocodec"] => string(3) "AVC"
        ["videobitrate"] => string(4) "2966"
        ["label"] => string(10) "Roku Media"
        ["poster"] => string(15) "images/10.5.jpg"
      }

What I’m trying to produce (at the moment) is a single level associative array for each movie . All the examples I’ve read on and followed always produced an array of arrays, which is much more difficult to work with.

This is were i’m at :

$iter = new SimpleXMLIterator($xml, 0, TRUE);
        Zend_Debug::dump($iter);
        //so far xpath has not worked for me, I can't get $result to return anything
        $result = $iter->xpath('/xml/viddb/movies/movie');
        $movies = array();
        for ($iter->rewind(); $iter->valid(); $iter->next()) {
            foreach ($iter->getChildren() as $key => $value) {
                //I can get each movie title to echo but when I try to put them into an
                // array it only has the last record
                echo $value->title . '<br />';
                $movies['title'] = $value->title;

            }
        }
        return $movies;

I feel like I’m missing something simple and obvious…as usual 🙂
[EDIT]
I found my error, I was tripping over the array of objects thing. I had to cast the data I wanted as a string to make it work how I wanted. Just for info here is what I came up with to put me on the track I wanted:

public function indexAction() {
        $xml = APPLICATION_PATH . '/../data/Videos.xml';
        $iter = new SimpleXMLElement($xml, 0, TRUE);
        $result = $iter->xpath('//movie');

        $movies = array();
        foreach ($result as $key => $movie) {
            $movies[$key + 1] = (string) $movie->title;
        }
        Zend_Debug::dump($movies, 'Movies');
    }

Answer 1

XPATH is the answer you are looking for. I think the reason your XPATH isn’t working is because you are looking for a movie node under the movies node when the movies node does not have any children.

Edit: Think it might be easier to just use a foreach loop instead of the iterator. I had to look up the iterator as I had never seen it before. Been using simplxml and xpath for a while too. Also, I believe you should only use SimpleXMLElement if you are planning on editing the XML as well. If you simply want to read it for comparison, best to use simplexml_load_file. You can also change your xpath to simply.

xpath('//movie');