SimpleXMLElement is removing attributes (php 7.2) - php

Question

Does anybody know why SimpleXMLElement is removing the attributes in my XML??
I have XML data that looks like this (note the translation "language" attribute):
<events>
<event id="d8f17143-0c67-48aa-a7f1-003a5ddbd28f">
<details>
<names>
<translation language="en">English title</translation>
<translation language="de">German title</translation>
</names>
</details>
</event>
</events>
I run it through SimpleXmlElement like so:
$xmlConvertedData = new \SimpleXMLElement($xml);
I dump out the data and it looks like so:
object(SimpleXMLElement)#958 (2) {
["#attributes"]=>
array(1) {
["Index"]=>
string(1) "1"
}
["Events"]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#956 (1) {
["Event"]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#959 (1) {
["Details"]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#826 (13) {
["Names"]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#834 (1) {
["Translation"]=>
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(32) "English title"
[1]=>
string(33) "German title"
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
...notice "translation" no longer has a "language" attribute, just an ID number 0 and 1. I need to know the attribute value because the XML does not always show the same language first.
(I edited the shortened the sample code to one record, so please ignore the #958 part)

Answer 1

Do not use any of the print_r() or var_dump() on a SimpleXML object, this will abbreviate the output as there is potentially a lot of it. If you want to check the document loaded use asXML()...
echo $xmlConvertedData->asXML();
or to output the one elements language...
echo $xmlConvertedData->event[0]->details->names->translation['language'];
( You also need to correct the last element of the sample - </events>)