Why does SimpleXML change my array to the array's first element when I use it?

Question

Here is my code:

$string = << 

 
  hello
  there<         


        

Answer 1

Ah yes, I remember simple XML nearly doing my head in with this parsing arrays issue Try the below code. It will give you an array of LOL elements, or, if you've just got a single LOL element, it will return that in an array as well.

The main advantage of that is you can do something like foreach ($lol as $element) and it will still work on a single (or on 0) LOL element.

 
   
     
      hello
      there
     
   
XML;

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);
echo "
";
echo "All of the XML:\n";
print_r($xml);

echo "\n\nJust the 'lol' array:\n";

$test_lols = $xml->testing->children();              
$childcount = count($test_lols);
if ($childcount < 2) {
    $lol = array($test_lols->lol);                   
}
else {
    $lol = (array) $test_lols;
    $lol = $lol['lol'];
    }

print_r($lol);
?>