Access all children of a certain node with simplexml and php

Question

I have a question and the answer is sure simple, but it just lacks of understanding from my side.

I have a xml file with following look (short example)

<item id="1234">
    <property name="country_id">
        <value>4402</value>
    </property>
    <property name="rc_maintenance_other">
    </property>
    <property name="claim_right_shareholder">
    </property>
    <property name="charges_other">
    </property>
    <property name="other_expenses_heating">
    </property>
    <property name="unpaid_bills_amount">
    </property>
    <property name="iv_person_phone">
        <value>03-6756711</value>
    </property>
</item>
<item id="9876">
   ...
</item>

My problem is, I want to read all propertys from the one item with the id 1234 with their attribute and their value, if exists, in an array.

I know how to access the certain Item with xpath. (Thanks to this wonderful stackoverflow community :) )

But how can I use the children() function only to a certain item?

Like this

foreach ($item[id="1234"]->children() as $property) {

Thank you so much!

Answer 1

I hope this can help you.

Code

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('<item id="1234">
    <property name="country_id">
        <value>4402</value>
    </property>
    <property name="rc_maintenance_other">
    </property>
    <property name="claim_right_shareholder">
    </property>
    <property name="charges_other">
    </property>
    <property name="other_expenses_heating">
    </property>
    <property name="unpaid_bills_amount">
    </property>
    <property name="iv_person_phone">
        <value>03-6756711</value>
    </property>
</item>');

foreach ($xml->xpath('//item[@id="1234"]') as $item)
{    
    foreach ($item->children() as $child) {
      echo $child['name'] ."\n";
    }
}

Output

country_id
rc_maintenance_other
claim_right_shareholder
charges_other
other_expenses_heating
unpaid_bills_amount
iv_person_phone

Example: http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/4e0ddba2ed273ab4a20dc9379ea9ed0d669a4c0d