Feb 29, 2012
kalpesh

PHP Convert SimpleXML object to Array

In PHP, if you want to convert your xml data to array for looping and displaying purpose, it sometimes becomes tedious. If you already have a SimpleXML class and want to convert XML to Array without any notices, warnings and recursively preparing the array, here is the method that will do so without any modifications needed. This will work by pasting this in your class file, if you are not using object oriented approach, you will have to remove “public” and “$this->” from this function.

public function simpleXMLToArray(SimpleXMLElement $xml,$attributesKey=null,$childrenKey=null,$valueKey=null){

    if($childrenKey && !is_string($childrenKey)){$childrenKey = '@children';}
    if($attributesKey && !is_string($attributesKey)){$attributesKey = '@attributes';}
    if($valueKey && !is_string($valueKey)){$valueKey = '@values';}

    $return = array();
    $name = $xml->getName();
    $_value = trim((string)$xml);
    if(!strlen($_value)){$_value = null;};

    if($_value!==null){
        if($valueKey){$return[$valueKey] = $_value;}
        else{$return = $_value;}
    }

    $children = array();
    $first = true;
    foreach($xml->children() as $elementName => $child){
        $value = $this->simpleXMLToArray($child,$attributesKey, $childrenKey,$valueKey);
        if(isset($children[$elementName])){
            if(is_array($children[$elementName])){
                if($first){
                    $temp = $children[$elementName];
                    unset($children[$elementName]);
                    $children[$elementName][] = $temp;
                    $first=false;
                }
                $children[$elementName][] = $value;
            }else{
                $children[$elementName] = array($children[$elementName],$value);
            }
        }
        else{
            $children[$elementName] = $value;
        }
    }
    if($children){
        if($childrenKey){$return[$childrenKey] = $children;}
        else{$return = array_merge($return,$children);}
    }

    $attributes = array();
    foreach($xml->attributes() as $name=>$value){
        $attributes[$name] = trim($value);
    }
    if($attributes){
        if($attributesKey){$return[$attributesKey] = $attributes;}
        else{$return = array_merge($return, $attributes);}
    }

    return $return;
}

Hope this helps.

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Welcome to my Blog

Kalpesh MehtaHelping Magento developers in their day-to-day development problems since 2011. Most of the problems and solutions here are my own experiences while working on different projects. Enjoy the blog and don't forget to throw comments and likes/+1's/tweets on posts you like. Thanks for visiting!

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