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.