PHP get values from SimpleXMLElement array

Question

I have this:

  [1]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#6 (1) {
  ["@attributes"]=>
  array(14) {
    ["name"]=>
    string(5) "MySQL"
    ["acknowledged"]=>
    string(1) "1"
    ["comments"]=>
    string(1) "1"
    ["current_check_attempt"]=>
    string(1) "1"
    ["downtime"]=>
    string(1) "0"
    ["last_check"]=>
    string(19) "2010-05-01 17:57:00"
    ["markdown_filter"]=>
    string(1) "0"
    ["max_check_attempts"]=>
    string(1) "3"
    ["output"]=>
    string(42) "CRITICAL - Socket timeout after 10 seconds"
    ["perfdata_available"]=>
    string(1) "1"
    ["service_object_id"]=>
    string(3) "580"
    ["state"]=>
    string(8) "critical"
    ["state_duration"]=>
    string(6) "759439"
    ["unhandled"]=>
    string(1) "0"
  }
}

(I used var_dump($child) to generate that)

How do I get the 'name' attribute out of there as a string?

Here is my code:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($results);

foreach($xml->data->list as $child) {
var_dump($child);
  echo $child->getName() . ": " . $child->name . "<br />";
  }

score 13 · Answer 1 · answered May 01 '10 at 23:29

While you can do:

echo $child['name'];

to see the value, you should note that $child['name'] is an object, not a string. Echoing it casts it to a string, so it works in that situation. But if you're storing it somewhere, it's better to cast it to a string yourself:

$name = (string) $child['name'];

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '10 at 22:13

12

With SimpleXML, you can get :

sub-elements, using object notation : $element->subElement
and attributes, using array notation : $element['attribute']

So, here, I'd say you'd have to use :

echo $child['name'];

As a reference, and for a couple of examples, see the Basic usage section of simplexml's manual.

Example #6 should be the interesting one, about attributes.

answered May 01 '10 at 22:13

Pascal MARTIN

385,748
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I had this exact problem, and I had to add `(string)` in front of all the attributes in order to get them as strings. Very confusing. (Thanks, PHP!) Edit: I just realized that JW. said the same thing below. Anyway, hope this helps for those of you that rush to the answer marked as correct and don't look at any of the other answers. – HartleySan May 19 '16 at 16:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 01 '10 at 23:14

Kind of messy, but I used this successfully

foreach($xml->data->children() as $child) {
//var_dump($child);
    foreach ($child->attributes() as $a => $b) {
     echo $a . '=' . $b . '<br />';
    }
}

Not sure why, but the OpsView API returns a two-dimensional array instead of just having one value per XML node :(

echo $child['name'];

works and is much more elegant, thank you.

CE_REAL · Answer 4 · 2011-11-24T10:32:15.300

I had a similar problem, I needed to get the string out of my SimpleXMLElement, I couldn't find the name to call it. Found the solution, by using (string) to get the string text:

foreach ($lines as $line) {
    array_push($result, new line(**(string)**$line));
}

array
  0 => 
    object(line)[190]
      private '_line' => 
        object(SimpleXMLElement)[128]
          public '@attributes' => 
            array
              ...
          string ' ' (length=1)
  1 => 
    object(line)[191]
      private '_line' => 
        object(SimpleXMLElement)[131]
          public '@attributes' => 
            array
              ...
          string ' ' (length=1)
  2 => 
    object(line)[192]
      private '_line' => 
        object(SimpleXMLElement)[132]
          public '@attributes' => 
            array
              ...
          string ' ~54**** I N V O I C E ****' (length=27)

PHP get values from SimpleXMLElement array

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