Using xml returned in curl function

Question

I have a curl function which connects to an API and returns xml.

I call this function from another script, and want to go through the xml and pick out some urls, but I get an I/O error so I think I am not handling the xml correctly.

This is the curl function

function &connect($url) {

    //If token is not set skip to else condition to request a new token 
    if(!empty($_SESSION['token'])) {


        //Initiate a new curl session
        $ch = curl_init($url);
        //Don't require header this time as curl_getinfo will tell us if we get HTTP 200 or 401
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); 
        //Provide Token in header
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Authorization: Basic '.$_SESSION['token']));
        //Execute the curl session
        $data = curl_exec($ch);

        //Close the curl session
        curl_close($ch);

        return $data;

    } else {

        //Run the getToken function above if we are not authenticated
        getToken($url);

        return 'error';

    }

}

This is it being called

//build url creates the api url required based on parameters passed into GET
$link = build_url;
//call the connect function and pass it the built link
$xml = connect($link);
//load the returned xml
$oxml = simplexml_load_file($xml);

The connect function is definitely getting the xml as I have echo'd it in the function and also when i run the script in my browser it outputs the xml to screen as well as "Warning: simplexml_load_file(): I/O warning : failed to load external entity "1" in "

Im not sure what im missing :-(

Answer 1

simplexml_load_file(); loads XML from a file by passing it the file name.

Since you already have the XML string, you want simplexml_load_string(); in stead.

edit:

Also you need to use curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); to tell curl to return the response, in stead of just returning a status code. The 1 that you are seeing is the status code.