How to prevent self closing tag in php simplexml

Question

I want to generate xml by using php simplexml.

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement(\'\');

$output = $xml->addChild(\'child1\');
$output->addChild(         


        

Answer 1

Despite the quite lengthy answers already given - which are not particularly wrong and do shed some light into some libxml library internals and it's PHP binding - you're most likely looking for:

$output->noValue = '';

To add an open tag, empty node-value and end tag (beautified, demo is here: http://3v4l.org/S2PKc):

  
    value
    
  

Just noting as it seems it has been overlooked with the existing answers.