Accessing an array that is part of an object seems to fail - php

Question

I have the following code snippet that doesn't do what I expect:
var_dump($pronunciationResults);
$alignEntries = $pronunciationResults->alignEntry;
var_dump($alignEntries);
Which produces for the first var_dump (I have elided out the end of the structure):
object(SimpleXMLElement)#1371 (1) {
["alignEntry"]=>
array(123) {
[0]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#1375 (3) {
["#attributes"]=>
array(1) {
["alignType"]=>
string(2) "OK"
}
["target"]=>
string(3) "The"
Followed by the output of the second var_dump
object(SimpleXMLElement)#1373 (3) {
["#attributes"]=>
array(1) {
["alignType"]=>
string(2) "OK"
}
["target"]=>
string(3) "The"
I have a really simple php program that works exactly as expected, and have no idea why in this case I get the first element of the array, rather than the array itself.
So the comment below by #trincot was interesting. However:
var_dump($pronunciationResults->children());
var_dump($pronunciationResults->children()->alignEntry);
var_dump($pronunciationResults->alignEntry->children());
Gives the exact same structure as I got above for each of the var_dump.
It turns out the foreach does walk the original alignEntries array, even though var_dump doesn't show it as an array.
I have no idea what is going on with var_dump

Answer 1

Your objects are not standard objects. You should use them using the appropriate API. In case of an instance of SimpleXMLElement, you can get the children array via the method children():
foreach ($pronunciationResults->children() as $child) {
var_dump($child);
}
Of course, since also those child elements are of the SimpleXMLElement class, you should also treat those via the proper methods. So if you would want to iterate over their attributes, then call the attributes() method on them, ...etc.
Do not focus on what you see in var_dump, except for the class. You'll see undocumented properties which are not supposed to be used directly. Stick to the documented interface for those objects.