How to tell apart SimpleXML objects representing element and attribute?

Question

I need to print arbitrary SimpleXML objects in a specific manner, with special handling of attribute nodes.

The problem is that SimpleXML elements and attri

Answer 1

Yes there is a way. Well, nothing elegant that you can retrieve via the API, but somewhere in the guts of the SimpleXML is keeping track of what it is and it makes a differences, for example, when you call functions such as getName() or asXML().

$element = new SimpleXMLElement('test');
print_r($element->getName());
print_r($element->asXML());
echo "------------------\n";
$element = new SimpleXMLElement('');
$at = $element['attr'];
print_r($at->getName());
print_r($at->asXML());

foo

test
------------------
attr 
attr="test"

Your code won't win a beauty contest, but at least you can do it.