PHP convert XML to JSON

Question

I am trying to convert xml to json in php. If I do a simple convert using simple xml and json_encode none of the attributes in the xml show.

$xml = simplexml         


        

Answer 1

This is an improvement of the most upvoted solution by Antonio Max, which also works with XML that has namespaces (by replacing the colon with an underscore). It also has some extra options (and does parse John correctly).

function parse_xml_into_array($xml_string, $options = array()) {
    /*
    DESCRIPTION:
    - parse an XML string into an array
    INPUT:
    - $xml_string
    - $options : associative array with any of these keys:
        - 'flatten_cdata' : set to true to flatten CDATA elements
        - 'use_objects' : set to true to parse into objects instead of associative arrays
        - 'convert_booleans' : set to true to cast string values 'true' and 'false' into booleans
    OUTPUT:
    - associative array
    */

    // Remove namespaces by replacing ":" with "_"
    if (preg_match_all("||", $xml_string, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
        foreach ($matches as $match) {
            $xml_string = str_replace('<'. $match[1] .':'. $match[2], '<'. $match[1] .'_'. $match[2], $xml_string);
            $xml_string = str_replace('