PHP Parsing XML to Get All String Values At Multiple Depths

I've got an XML like the following example:

<article>
  <body>
    <title>I <underline><bold>LOVE</bold></underline> Coding</title>
  </body>
</article>

I'd like to get the full text of the node title.

$xml=simplexml_load_file("file.xml");
$title=$xml->xpath('//title')??[];
echo (string)$title;

I cannot seem to go deeper and grab the underlined/bold XML parts.

I would like the results to be a string I LOVE Coding.

How can I achieve this? I am only getting I Coding.

I've also tried xpath('string(//title)') but got an empty result.

Solution

SimpleXML is, quite frankly, not a good interface to work with. It's simple as in there's not much to it, but also simple in that there's a fair bit missing, and frequently ends up needing more work anyway.

DomDocument is more full-featured, and by far better to work with, IMO.

$xml = <<<_E_
<article>
  <body>
    <title>I <underline><bold>LOVE</bold></underline> Coding</title>
  </body>
</article>
_E_;

$d = new DomDocument();
$d->loadXml($xml);
$x = new DomXPath($d);
$r = $x->query('//title');

var_dump($r[0]->textContent);

Output:

string(13) "I LOVE Coding"