Remove XML child with same name

Question

I have a large XML with the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<valasz xmlns="" verzio="1.0">
<arak>
<ar>
<cikkid>439902</cikkid>
<cikkszam>DVDV-16Z10</cikkszam>
<listaar>1225,0000000</listaar>
<ar>1157,6200000</ar>
<akcios_ar>1157,6200000</akcios_ar>
<devizanem>HUF</devizanem>
</ar>
<ar>
..
<ar>1157,6200000</ar>
...
</ar>
</arak>

What i want is to remove arak->ar->ar child because its causing in the import it looks like duplicates, and slowing down the process.

I have tried the following:

    $node = readfile($arlista[0]);
    $nodes = simplexml_load_string($node);
    $arnode = $nodes->xpath("/valasz/arak/ar/ar");
        foreach ($arnode as &$ar){
            $nodes->removeChild($ar);
        }
    echo $nodes;

And this only returns me the original xml, without removing the arak->ar->ar child nodes.

What am i doing wrong?

Answer 1

There is no such thing as ::removeChild() in SimpleXML. What you want do do in your foreach loop is this:

foreach ($arnode as $ar){
    unset($ar->{0});
}

Please note: The posted XML is not valid but I am sure that is just some kind of copy&paste flaw

Complete code:

$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
            <valasz xmlns="" verzio="1.0">
                <arak>
                    <ar>
                        <cikkid>439902</cikkid>
                        <cikkszam>DVDV-16Z10</cikkszam>
                        <listaar>1225,0000000</listaar>
                        <ar>1157,6200000</ar>
                        <akcios_ar>1157,6200000</akcios_ar>
                        <devizanem>HUF</devizanem>
                    </ar>
                    <ar>
                        <ar>1157,6200000</ar>
                    </ar>
                </arak>
            </valasz>';
$nodes = simplexml_load_string($xml);
$arnode = $nodes->xpath("/valasz/arak/ar/ar");
foreach ($arnode as $ar){
    unset($ar->{0});
}
print_r($nodes); 

Returns this SimpleXMLElement Object ( [@attributes] => Array ( [verzio] => 1.0 )

    [arak] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [ar] => Array
                (
                    [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [cikkid] => 439902
                            [cikkszam] => DVDV-16Z10
                            [listaar] => 1225,0000000
                            [akcios_ar] => 1157,6200000
                            [devizanem] => HUF
                        )

                    [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                        )

                )

        )

)