PHP considers array as object [duplicate] - php

Question

I need to recursively cast a PHP SimpleXMLObject to an array. The problem is that each sub element is also a PHP SimpleXMLElement.
Is this possible?

Answer 1

json_decode(json_encode((array) simplexml_load_string($obj)), 1);

Answer 2

Didn't test this one, but this seems to get it done:
function convertXmlObjToArr($obj, &$arr)
{
$children = $obj->children();
foreach ($children as $elementName => $node)
{
$nextIdx = count($arr);
$arr[$nextIdx] = array();
$arr[$nextIdx]['#name'] = strtolower((string)$elementName);
$arr[$nextIdx]['#attributes'] = array();
$attributes = $node->attributes();
foreach ($attributes as $attributeName => $attributeValue)
{
$attribName = strtolower(trim((string)$attributeName));
$attribVal = trim((string)$attributeValue);
$arr[$nextIdx]['#attributes'][$attribName] = $attribVal;
}
$text = (string)$node;
$text = trim($text);
if (strlen($text) > 0)
{
$arr[$nextIdx]['#text'] = $text;
}
$arr[$nextIdx]['#children'] = array();
convertXmlObjToArr($node, $arr[$nextIdx]['#children']);
}
return;
}
Taken from http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=87283

Answer 3

It is possible. This is a recursive function which prints out the tags of parent elements and the tags + contents of elements that have no more children. You can alter it to build an array:
foreach( $simpleXmlObject as $element )
{
recurse( $element );
}
function recurse( $parent )
{
echo '<' . $parent->getName() . '>' . "\n";
foreach( $parent->children() as $child )
{
if( count( $child->children() ) > 0 )
{
recurse( $child );
}
else
{
echo'<' . $child->getName() . '>';
echo iconv( 'UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1', $child );
echo '</' . $child->getName() . '>' . "\n";
}
}
echo'</' . $parent->getName() . '>' . "\n";
}

Answer 4

I don't see the point since SimpleXMLObject can be threated just like arrays anyway...
But if you really need that, just check chassagnette's answer of in this thread or this post in a forum.

Answer 5

Depending on some troubles with CDATA, arrays etc.
(see: SimpleXMLElement to PHP Array)
I think, this would be the best solution:
public function simpleXml2ArrayWithCDATASupport($xml)
{
$array = (array)$xml;
if (count($array) === 0) {
return (string)$xml;
}
foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
if (is_object($value) && strpos(get_class($value), 'SimpleXML') > -1) {
$array[$key] = $this->simpleXml2ArrayWithCDATASupport($value);
} else if (is_array($value)) {
$array[$key] = $this->simpleXml2ArrayWithCDATASupport($value);
} else {
continue;
}
}
return $array;
}

Answer 6

Here my iterative (even if I don't think you will get a stack explosion by parsing data with a recursive one) implementation of a recursive cast to array. This is a more direct manner of doing it than passing through json_**decode functions:
function xml2Array(SimpleXMLElement $el): stdClass {
$ret = $el;
$stack = [&$ret];
while (count($stack) > 0) {
$cur = &$stack[count($stack) - 1];
array_splice($stack, -1);
$cur = (object) (array) $cur;
foreach ($cur as $key => $child) {
$childRef = &$cur->{$key};
if ($child instanceof SimpleXMLElement)
$stack[count($stack) - 1] = &$childRef;
elseif(is_array($child))
foreach ($childRef as $ckey => $cell) {
if ($cell instanceof SimpleXMLElement)
$stack[count($stack) - 1] = &$childRef[$ckey];
}
}
}
return $ret;
}

Answer 7

For those of you who have concerns about the CDATA case,
combining #ajayi-oluwaseun-emmanuel's answer with this answer worked for me:
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml_str, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
$json = json_encode($xml);
$arr = json_decode($json,TRUE);