Loop through an XML object with SimpleXML

I am trying to use SimpleXML in PHP to loop through a XML object - the object format is below:-

I get the following error when I try to get the element tags by name - can anyone explain what I am doing wrong?

Call to undefined method SimpleXMLElement::getElementsByTagName() on ...

Below is the XML file I am reading from:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<response>
    <products>
        <item>
            <product_id>32417</product_id>
            <manufacturer>Alcatel</manufacturer>
            <model>Sparq 2</model>
            <deeplink>http://www.mysite.com/sc_offer?gid=32417</deeplink>
            <thumbnail_URL>http://www.mysite.com/images/devices/thumbs/Alcatel-Sparq-II.jpg</thumbnail_URL>
            <image_URL>http://www.mysite.com/images/devices/Alcatel-Sparq-II.jpg</image_URL>
            <price_not_working>0.00</price_not_working>
            <price_poor>0.00</price_poor>
            <price_fair>20.00</price_fair>
            <price_good>25.00</price_good>
            <price_perfect>25.00</price_perfect>
            <price_new>25.00</price_new>
            <battery_new>1.00</battery_new>
            <battery_perfect>1.00</battery_perfect>
            <battery_good>1.00</battery_good>
            <battery_fair>1.00</battery_fair>
            <battery_poor>0.00</battery_poor>
            <charger_new>1.00</charger_new>
            <charger_perfect>1.00</charger_perfect>
            <charger_good>1.00</charger_good>
            <charger_fair>1.00</charger_fair>
            <charger_poor>0.00</charger_poor>
            <packaging_new>1.00</packaging_new>
            <packaging_perfect>1.00</packaging_perfect>
            <packaging_good>1.00</packaging_good>
            <packaging_fair>1.00</packaging_fair>
            <packaging_poor>0.00</packaging_poor>
        </item>
        <item>
            <product_id>31303</product_id>
            <manufacturer>Apple</manufacturer>
            <model>iPhone 3G 8gb</model>
            <deeplink>http://www.mysite.com/sc_offer?gid=31303</deeplink>
            <thumbnail_URL>http://www.mysite.com/images/devices/thumbs/iPhone 8 3G.jpg</thumbnail_URL>
            <image_URL>http://www.mysite.com/images/devices/iPhone 8 3G.jpg</image_URL>
            <price_not_working>0.00</price_not_working>
            <price_poor>0.00</price_poor>
            <price_fair>7.00</price_fair>
            <price_good>2.00</price_good>
            <price_perfect>2.00</price_perfect>
            <price_new>2.00</price_new>
            <battery_new>1.00</battery_new>
            <battery_perfect>1.00</battery_perfect>
            <battery_good>1.00</battery_good>
            <battery_fair>1.00</battery_fair>
            <battery_poor>0.00</battery_poor>
            <charger_new>1.00</charger_new>
            <charger_perfect>1.00</charger_perfect>
            <charger_good>1.00</charger_good>
            <charger_fair>1.00</charger_fair>
            <charger_poor>0.00</charger_poor>
            <packaging_new>1.00</packaging_new>
            <packaging_perfect>1.00</packaging_perfect>
            <packaging_good>1.00</packaging_good>
            <packaging_fair>1.00</packaging_fair>
            <packaging_poor>0.00</packaging_poor>
        </item>
    </products>
</response>

My PHP code is below:

$devices = $xml->getElementsByTagName( "response" ); // error on this line

I am trying to make devices an array so I can use the data in a foreach loop.

Solution 1:

SimpleXML doesn't have a getElementsByTagName() method (DOMDocument does).

In SimpleXML, the object (e.g $xml) is treated as the root element. So you can loop through the product items like so:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);
foreach($xml->products->item as $item)
{
    echo (string)$item->product_id;
    echo (string)$item->model;
}

Example of building a devices associative array:

$devices = array();

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);
foreach($xml->products->item as $item)
{
   $device = array();

   foreach($item as $key => $value)
   {
        $device[(string)$key] = (string)$value;
   }

   $devices[] = $device;
}

print_r($devices);

Outputs:

Solution 2:

I don't want to spoil the existing answer as it is answering correct an in a general fashion.

For your concrete requirements as with your XML there aren't any attributes and you're just looking for the element-name => node-value pairs here, there is one function that comes to mind in conjunction with SimpleXMLElement here: get_object_vars.

It is useful whenever you convert an object into an array and as SimpleXMLElement turns element names into object property names and the node-values as those property values it's pretty straight forward here:

$xml     = simplexml_load_string($buffer);

$items   = $xml->products->item;

$devices = array_map('get_object_vars', iterator_to_array($items, FALSE));

print_r($devices);

The output is as suggested in the existing answer. And the online demo is here: https://3v4l.org/iQKQP

You will likely able to achieve similar results with casting to arrays (if not exactly the same with SimpleXML), however in this case as I wanted to map it, I needed a true function.

There is also the json-en- and -de-code doubling for converting complete trees, which comes in handy here, too:

$xml     = simplexml_load_string($buffer);

$items   = $xml->products;

$devices = json_decode(json_encode($items), TRUE)['item'];

The output then again is exactly as the existing answer. And the online demo again is here: https://3v4l.org/ToWOs

Hope this is helpful and widens the view a bit.

Loop through an XML object with SimpleXML

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

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