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phpparsingsimplexml

How to echo a child in xml with a : in name with simplexml

I understand how to call children in .xml documents by parsing with simplexml, however I'm having a problem calling a child with a name that looks like this:name2.

To be more specific, I'm trying to echo nhc:center from this .xml document: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/nhc_ep4.xml.

Currently my code looks like this:

<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/nhc_ep4.xml") or die("Error: Cannot create object");
echo $xml->channel->title[0] . "<br>";
echo $xml->channel->description[0] . "<br><br>";
echo $xml->channel->item[0]->nhc:Cyclone->nhc:center . "<br>";
?>

The first three lines work perfectly, however I return this error when trying to call nhc:center:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting ',' or ';' in C:\xampp\htdocs\test.php on line 5

I'm sure it's something simple I'm missing here, any help is greatly appreciated!

Solution

  • Edit 2

    A day after this answer was accepted, a less "hacky" answer was posted here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/44813107/713874

    Original Reply

    Try wrapping the name in curly-brackets and quotation marks, like this:

    echo $xml->channel->item[0]->{'nhc:Cyclone'}->{'nhc:center'} . "<br>";

    Source: How do I access this object property with a hyphenated name?

    Edit: I noticed your domains were all public and saw it still wasn't grabbing your info. Weird. I did find this work-around that solved it:

    $xml = simplexml_load_string(str_replace("nhc:", "nhc", file_get_contents("http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/nhc_ep4.xml")));