XPath in SimpleXML for default namespaces without needing prefixes

Question

I have an XML document that has a default namespace attached to it, eg

Answer 1

In order to avoid hacks like the str_replace one you have there (and I would recommend avoiding that), you can run the XML files through an XSLT to strip out the namespace:

When run on either of these inputs:

The output is the same:

This would allow you to use your prefix-less XPaths on the result.