SimpleXML get node value

Question

Say I have this following XML structure:

    
        some value<         


        

Answer 1

Variant for xpath (Also how to get content of node having dashes in name):

 


    some value
    another value
 

$xml = simplexml_load_string($content);
$node_value= (string)$xml->xpath('parent/child-1')[0];

result of $node_value:

"some value"