Question

When I use simplexml_load_file to individual file, it works fine. However, since I have so many of them, when I tried to run my script to a batch of files.

In case this is relavant, I have two kind of log files to load into my database. One starts with . The other starts with . (But looking at the error, the error occurs even w/ the same structure.)

<?php
$dir_path = ".";
if ($dir_handler = opendir($dir_path)) {
    while (($sub_dir = readdir($dir_handler)) !== false) {  //reading all sub dir
        if (is_dir($sub_dir)) {
            if (substr($sub_dir,0,6) == "201209") {     //filter only desired sub dir
                $sub_dir_handler = opendir($sub_dir);
                    while($file = readdir($sub_dir_handler)) { //reading files in each 
                                                               //qualified sub dir
                        if (($file != ".") && ($file != "..")) { //except . and ..
                            $xml = simplexml_load_file($file);   // got error on 
                                                                 //the second file
                            if ($xml->getname() != "hash") { // tried to distinct 
                                                            // structure type but error

Answer 1

I guess simplexml_load_file return false (error)
You can see those using libxml_get_errors, cf http://php.net/manual/en/simplexml.examples-errors.php

Edit:
Considering your 2nd comment, looks like your file is not accessible to SimpleXML…