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phpsimplexmlcdata

PHP - Parse XML with simplexml_load_string - Getting empty values with CDATA?

When parsing an XML array like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Products>
  <Product>
    <Code>ABC-1001</Code>
    <Brand>ZCOM</Brand>
  </Product>
</Products>

I get an output of:

Array
(
  [0] => Array
  (
    [Code] => AP1024-DDRII640
    [Brand] => ZCOM
  )
}

But when the XML is like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Products Code="ABC-1001">
  <Product>
    <Code><![CDATA[ABC-1001]]></Code>
    <Brand><![CDATA[ZCOM]]></Brand>
  </Product>
</Products>

It returns:

array
  0 => 
    array (size=12)
      '@attributes' => 
        array (size=1)
          'Code' => string 'ABC-1001' (length=8)
      'Code' => 
        array (size=0)
          empty
      'Brand' => 
        array (size=0)
          empty

This is how the XML is parsed from a URL:

$updateUrl = file_get_contents('http://www.someplace/xmlfeed/xml.cfm?asd=12345&uhg=9999');
$updateXml=<<<XML
$updateUrl
XML;
$updateXmlObject=json_decode(json_encode((array) simplexml_load_string($updateXml)), 1);
$updatePHPArray=$updateXmlObject['Product'];

And:

var_dump($updatePHPArray);exit;

Gives the output as above.

Now, why am I getting empty values in the second instance and how could I remedy this without access to the XML source?

Solution

  • The problem seems to be that the cast you're doing to array can return results different than the actual structure of the XML object.

    Something like the following code should give you an array with the correct info:

    $array = array_map('strval', (array) $xml->Product);

    Take care you cast those parts to string of which you'll get the data from (in the example done via strval()). In the opposite, json_encode() is not working well with SimpleXMLElement.