“At sign” @ in SimpleXML object?

Question

This is the output of print_r() run on a typical SimpleXMLElement object:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [@attributes] => Array
        (

            


        

Answer 1

I am working with an HTTP API that gives out only XML formatted data. So first I loaded it into SimpleXML and was also puzzled by the @attributes issue.. how do I get at the precious data it contains? print_r() confused me.

My solution was to create an array and an iterator variable at 0. Loop through a SimpleXML object with foreach and get at the data with the attribues() method and load it into my created array. Iterate before foreach loop ends.

So print_r() went from showing this:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [@attributes] => Array
        (
            [ID] => 1
            [First] => John
            [Last] => Smith
        )
)

To a much more usable normal array. Which is great because I wanted the option to quickly convert array into json if needed.

My solution in code:

$obj = simplexml_load_string($apiXmlData);
$fugly = $obj->Deeply->Nested->XML->Data->Names;
$people = array();
$i = 0;
foreach($fugly as $val)
{
  $people[$i]['id'] += $val->attributes()->ID;
  $people[$i]['first'] = "". $val->attributes()->First;
  $people[$i]['last'] = "". $val->attributes()->Last;
  $i++;
}

Quick note would be PHP's settype() function is weird/buggy, so I added the + to make sure ID is an integer and added the quotes to make sure the name is string. If there isn't a variable conversion of some kind, you're going to be loading SimpleXML objects into the array you created.

Final result of print_r():

Array
(
   [0] => Array
    (
        [id] => 1
        [first] => John
        [last] => Smith
    )

   [1] => Array
    (
        [id] => 2
        [first] => Jane
        [last] => Doe
    )
)