Question

Okey so I am a bit confused about this. I have a xml that looks something like this:

<track>
<artist mbid="77cceea7-91bb-4a4c-ae41-bc9c46c1ccb5"> Red Hot Chili Peppers </artist>
<name> under the bridge </name>
<streamable>0</streamable>
<mbid/>
<album mbid="0fe94139-df63-4e51-b2e7-a1d53535cdd9">  Blood Sugar Sex Magik </album>
<url> http://xxxxxx.com </url>
<date uts="1351691244">31 Oct 2012, 13:47</date>
</track>

And I use simpleXML to parse the xml like this:

$artists = array();

$xml = simplexml_load_file("http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxx");

foreach($xml->recenttracks->track  as $track)
{
$artist = $track->artist;
    array_push($artists, $artist);
}  

var_dump($artists);

now I was hoping to get a nice array looking like this:

array(4) {
[0]=>
string(20) "Red Hot Chili Peppers "
[1]=>
string(20) "Red Hot Chili Peppers"
}

but what I am getting is something like this:

array(2) 
{ 
[0]=> object(SimpleXMLElement)#6 (2) { ["@attributes"]=> array(1) { ["mbid"]=> string(36) "8bfac288-ccc5-448d-9573-c33ea2aa5c30" } [0]=> string(21) "Red Hot Chili Peppers" } 
[1]=> object(SimpleXMLElement)#4 (2) { ["@attributes"]=> array(1) { ["mbid"]=> string(36) "8bfac288-ccc5-448d-9573-c33ea2aa5c30" } [0]=> string(21) "Red Hot Chili Peppers" } 
} 

Now how do I get the artist only, not the whole SimpleXMLElement because I just can’t figure it out.

Answer 1

The items you are adding to the array are SimpleXMLElements. If you just want to add the string value, you must cast the SimpleXMLElement to a string.

$artists = array();
foreach($xml->recenttracks->track  as $track)
{
    $artists[] = (string) $track->artist;
}  

var_export($artists);

In general, you always want to cast SimpleXMLElement to a string when you want the string value. In some cases PHP will automatically coerce to string (for example when you echo it), but PHP type coercion rules are so complicated that it’s better to always be explicit.

(Also, there is no need for array_push(), just use the bracket notation $arrayname[] = $appendedvalue.)