Accessing @attribute from SimpleXML

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1652128

  •  22-07-2019
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Question

I am having a problem accessing the @attribute section of my SimpleXML object. When I var_dump the entire object, I get the correct output, and when I var_dump the rest of the object (the nested tags), I get the correct output, but when I follow the docs and var_dump $xml->OFFICE->{'@attributes'}, I get an empty object, despite the fact that the first var_dump clearly shows that there are attributes to output.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong here/how I can make this work?

Was it helpful?

Solution

You can get the attributes of an XML element by calling the attributes() function on an XML node. You can then var_dump the return value of the function.

More info at php.net http://php.net/simplexmlelement.attributes

Example code from that page:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);
foreach($xml->foo[0]->attributes() as $a => $b) {
    echo $a,'="',$b,"\"\n";
}

OTHER TIPS

Try this

$xml->attributes()->Token

I used before so many times for getting @attributes like below and it was a little bit longer.

$att = $xml->attributes();
echo $att['field'];

It should be more easy and you can get attributes following format only at once:

Standard Way - Array-Access Attributes (AAA)

$xml['field'];

Other alternatives are:

Right & Quick Format

$xml->attributes()->{'field'};

Wrong Formats

$xml->attributes()->field;
$xml->{"@attributes"}->field;
$xml->attributes('field');
$xml->attributes()['field'];
$xml->attributes->['field'];

$xml = <<<XML
<root>
<elem attrib="value" />
</root>
XML;

$sxml = simplexml_load_string($xml);
$attrs = $sxml->elem->attributes();
echo $attrs["attrib"]; //or just $sxml->elem["attrib"]

Use SimpleXMLElement::attributes.

Truth is, the SimpleXMLElement get_properties handler lies big time. There's no property named "@attributes", so you can't do $sxml->elem->{"@attributes"}["attrib"].

You can just do:

echo $xml['token'];

If you're looking for a list of these attributes though, XPath will be your friend

print_r($xml->xpath('@token'));

Unfortunately I have a unique build (stuck with Gentoo for the moment) of PHP 5.5, and what I found was that

 $xml->tagName['attribute']

was the only solution that worked. I tried all of Bora's methods above, including the 'Right & Quick' format, and they all failed.

The fact that this is the easiest format is a plus, but didn't enjoy thinking I was insane trying all of the formats others were saying worked.

Njoy for what its worth (did I mention unique build?).

It helped me to convert the result of simplexml_load_file($file) into a JSON Structure and decode it back:

$xml = simplexml_load_file("$token.xml");
$json = json_encode($xml);
$xml_fixed = json_decode($json);

$try1 = $xml->structure->{"@attributes"}['value'];
print_r($try1);

>> result: SimpleXMLElement Object
(
)

$try2 = $xml_fixed->structure->{"@attributes"}['value'];
print_r($try2);

>> result: stdClass Object
(
    [key] => value
)
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