W3Mentor’s guide to simpleXML : Part 3 – Accessing XML Elements

The document element is the object returned when a document is first loaded into SimpleXML. The element name can be used as properties of SimpleXMLElement object to access the element in the tree.i.e if there is a child under the root, we can access it as $se->child, where $se is the document element.

Example code:

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<?php
$xml = "<root><child><subchild>childcontent</subchild></child></root>";
$xmldata = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
/* Access the child element of the root element */
$childinfo = $xmldata->child;
/* Access the sub child element from the childinfo element */
$subchildinfo = $childinfo->subchild;
?>

Sample input xml file – contactfile.xml:

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact id="43956">
     <personal>
          <name>
               <first>J</first>
               <middle>J</middle>
               <last>J</last>
          </name>
          <title>Manager</title>
          <employer>National</employer>
          <dob>1971-12-22</dob>
     </personal>
</contact>

Example code:

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<?php
 
$contact =simplexml_load_file("contactfile.xml");
/* Access the child element of the root element */
$personalinfo = $contact->personal;
/* Access the title child element from the personalinfo element */
$title = $personalinfo->title;
?>

In the example above, accessing a child element is as simple as returning the object from the parent object by using the name of the child element.

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