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

Found FTav's answer the most useful as it is very customizable, but his xml2js function has some flaws. For instance, if children elements has equal tagnames they all will be stored in a single object, this means that the order of elements will not be preserved. In some cases we really want to preserve order, so we better store every element's data in a separate object:

function xml2js($xmlnode) {
    $jsnode = array();
    $nodename = $xmlnode->getName();
    $current_object = array();

    if (count($xmlnode->attributes()) > 0) {
        foreach($xmlnode->attributes() as $key => $value) {
            $current_object[$key] = (string)$value;
        }
    }

    $textcontent = trim((string)$xmlnode);
    if (strlen($textcontent) > 0) {
        $current_object["content"] = $textcontent;
    }

    if (count($xmlnode->children()) > 0) {
        $current_object['children'] = array();
        foreach ($xmlnode->children() as $childxmlnode) {
            $childname = $childxmlnode->getName();
            array_push($current_object['children'], xml2js($childxmlnode, true));
        }
    }

    $jsnode[ $nodename ] = $current_object;
    return $jsnode;
}

Here is how it works. Initial xml structure:

  With text
  
  The last one

Result JSON:

{
    "some-tag": {
        "some-attribute": "value of some attribute",
        "children": [
            {
                "another-tag": {
                    "content": "With text"
                }
            },
            {
                "surprise": []
            },
            {
                "another-tag": {
                    "content": "The last one"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}