Get XML Element as a string from xml data ( Search through XML data ) in php

Question

I am trying to get 11 xml elements from a 'n' number of xml elements. I have 11 ids where id is unique for all xml elements.

I am using php

$xml = simplexml_load_string($j[0]); // $j[0] contains 'n' number of xml elements. I need to get 11 xml elements with 11 different ids.

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadXML($j[0]);
$players = $doc->getElementsByTagName('player');

I need to parse through the below xml data($j[0])

<testsquad>
    <team name="team1" abbr="t1" >
        <tplayers>
            <player name="player1" id="1"/>
            <player name="player2" id="2"/>
            <player name="player3" id="3"/>
            <player name="player4" id="4"/>
            <player name="player5" id="5"/>
            <player name="player6" id="6"/>
            <player name="player7" id="7"/>
            <player name="player8" id="8"/>
            <player name="player9" id="9"/>
            <player name="player10" id="10"/>
            <player name="player11" id="11"/>
            <player name="player12" id="12"/>
            <player name="player13" id="13"/>
            <player name="player14" id="14"/>
            <player name="player14" id="14"/>
        </tplayers>
    </team>
</testsquad>

From the given xml data with 'n' number of player elements, I need to get only 11 elements.

I am confused with searching through xml data using php.

When I do the var_dump($doc->loadXML($j[0]));, I got the below error.

Warning: DOMDocument::loadXML(): Empty string supplied as input

Where I am going wrong?. Please comment if my question is not clear.

The given xml data doesn't have the header like below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>

Is that the reason, it is saying Empty string supplied as input?

Answer 1

I used SimpleXMLElement's xpath instead of DOMDocument and I got the Simple XML Element object as a result.

Check out the below code.

$player_id_list = array(1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21);
$xml=new SimpleXMLElement($j[0]);
foreach($player_id_list as $new_player_id)
{
    $result = $xml->xpath("team/PlayerDetails/player[@id=".$new_player_id."]");
    echo "<pre>";
    var_dump($result);
    echo "</pre>";
}