Search code examples
phpxmlattributessimplexml

SimpleXML selecting attributes with PHP?

Okay so I've never worked with SimpleXML before and I'm having a few problems

Here's my PHP:

map.api.php

$location = $_SESSION['location'];
$address = $location; // Business Location
$prepAddr = str_replace(' ','+',$address);
$feedUrl="http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?q=". $prepAddr ."&format=xml&addressdetails=1&polygon=1";

$sxml = simplexml_load_file($feedUrl);

foreach($sxml->attributes() as $type){
  $lat = $type->place['lat'];
  $long = $type->place['lon'];
}

And here's an example of the XML table I'm working from.

<searchresults timestamp="Thu, 28 Jan 16 14:16:34 +0000" attribution="Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" querystring="M27 6bu, 149 Station road, Swinton, Manchester" polygon="true" exclude_place_ids="65827001" more_url="http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?format=xml&exclude_place_ids=65827001&accept-language=en-US,en;q=0.8&polygon=1&addressdetails=1&q=M27+6bu%2C+149+Station+road%2C+Swinton%2C+Manchester">
  <place place_id="65827001" osm_type="way" osm_id="32861649" place_rank="26" boundingbox="53.5122168,53.5190893,-2.3402445,-2.3331231" lat="53.5156919" lon="-2.3368185" display_name="Station Road, Newtown, Salford, Greater Manchester, North West England, England, M27 4AE, United Kingdom" class="highway" type="secondary" importance="0.5">
    <road>Station Road</road>
    <suburb>Newtown</suburb>
    <town>Salford</town>
    <county>Greater Manchester</county>
    <state_district>North West England</state_district>
    <state>England</state>
    <postcode>M27 4AE</postcode>
    <country>United Kingdom</country>
    <country_code>gb</country_code>
  </place>
</searchresults>

I want to select the "lat" and "lon" attributes from <place>, but when I echo $lat and $long they are empty, why?

Solution

  • Okay so I fixed this myself.

    Instead of running everything through the foreach loop (as shown below):

    foreach($sxml->attributes() as $type){
 $lat = $type->place['lat'];
 $long = $type->place['lon'];
}

    I just directly got the attribute values and stored them in a variable:

    $lat = $sxml->place->attributes()->lat;
$long = $sxml->place->attributes()->lon;

    This then returned an error/warning: Warning: main() [function.main]: Node no longer exists

    By using isset and checking if the value exists first, you can get around this.

    if (isset($sxml->place))
{
 $lat = $sxml->place->attributes()->lat;
 $long = $sxml->place->attributes()->lon;
}