Getting cdata content while parsing xml file
I have an xml file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xml>
<events date="01-10-2009" color="0x99CC00" selected="true">
<event>
<title>You can use HTML and CSS</title>
<description><![CDATA[This is the description ]]></description>
</event>
</events>
</xml>
I used xpath and and xquery for parsing the xml.
$xml_str = file_get_contents('xmlfile');
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml_str);
if(!empty($xml))
{
$nodes = $xml->xpath('//xml/events');
}
i am getting the title properly, but iam not getting description.How i can get data inside the cdata
SimpleXML has a bit of a problem with CDATA, so use:
$xml = simplexml_load_file('xmlfile', 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
if(!empty($xml))
{
$nodes = $xml->xpath('//xml/events');
}
print_r( $nodes );
This will give you:
Array
(
[0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[@attributes] => Array
(
[date] => 01-10-2009
[color] => 0x99CC00
[selected] => true
)
[event] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[title] => You can use HTML and CSS
[description] => This is the description
)
)
)
You are probably being misled into thinking that the CDATA is missing by using print_r
or one of the other "normal" PHP debugging functions. These cannot see the full content of a SimpleXML object, as it is not a "real" PHP object.
If you run echo $nodes[0]->Description
, you'll find your CDATA comes out fine. What's happening is that PHP knows that echo
expects a string, so asks SimpleXML for one; SimpleXML responds with all the string content, including CDATA.
To get at the full string content reliably, simply tell PHP that what you want is a string using the (string)
cast operator, e.g. $description = (string)$nodes[0]->Description
.
To debug SimpleXML objects and not be fooled by quirks like this, use a dedicated debugging function such as one of these: https://github.com/IMSoP/simplexml_debug