Converting a SimpleXML Object to an Array [closed]

I found this in the PHP manual comments:

/**
 * function xml2array
 *
 * This function is part of the PHP manual.
 *
 * The PHP manual text and comments are covered by the Creative Commons 
 * Attribution 3.0 License, copyright (c) the PHP Documentation Group
 *
 * @author  k dot antczak at livedata dot pl
 * @date    2011-04-22 06:08 UTC
 * @link    http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.simplexml.php#103617
 * @license http://www.php.net/license/index.php#doc-lic
 * @license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
 * @license CC-BY-3.0 <http://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-3.0>
 */
function xml2array ( $xmlObject, $out = array () )
{
    foreach ( (array) $xmlObject as $index => $node )
        $out[$index] = ( is_object ( $node ) ) ? xml2array ( $node ) : $node;

    return $out;
}

It could help you. However, if you convert XML to an array you will loose all attributes that might be present, so you cannot go back to XML and get the same XML.

Just (array) is missing in your code before the simplexml object:

...

$xml   = simplexml_load_string($string, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);

$array = json_decode(json_encode((array)$xml), TRUE);
                                 ^^^^^^^
...