Get xml node full path in Php / SimpleXml - php

Question

I need the full path of an xml node.
I saw the answer in this question but I wasn't able to use it.
Below the code I used on a php web tester with no success:
$xml = <<<EOF
<root>
<First>
<Martha>Text01</Martha>
<Lucy>Text02</Lucy>
<Bob>
<Jhon>Text03</Jhon>
</Bob>
<Frank>One</Frank>
<Jessy>Two</Jessy>
</First>
<Second>
<Mary>
<Jhon>Text04</Jhon>
<Frank>Text05</Frank>
<Jessy>Text06</Jessy>
</Mary>
</Second>
</root>
EOF;
$MyXml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
$Jhons = $MyXml->xpath('//Jhon');
foreach ($Jhons as $Jhon){
echo (string) $Jhon;
//No one of the following works
echo (string) $Jhon->xpath('./node()/path()');
echo (string) $Jhon->xpath('./path()');
echo (string) $Jhon->xpath('.path()');
echo (string) $Jhon->path();
echo '<br/> ';
}
I need: "/root/First/Bob/Jhon" and "/root/Second/Mary/Jhon"

Answer 1

You can use the much more powerful DOM (DOMDocument based in PHP) api to do this...
$MyXml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
$Jhons = $MyXml->xpath('//Jhon');
foreach ($Jhons as $Jhon){
$dom = dom_import_simplexml($Jhon);
echo $dom->getNodePath().PHP_EOL;
}
The dom_import_simplexml($Jhon) converts the node and then getNodePath() displays the path...
This gives ( for the example)
/root/First/Bob/Jhon
/root/Second/Mary/Jhon
Or if you just want to stick to SimpleXML, you can use the XPath axes ancestor-or-self to list the current node and each parent node...
$MyXml = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
$Jhons = $MyXml->xpath('//Jhon');
foreach ($Jhons as $Jhon){
$parent = $Jhon->xpath("ancestor-or-self::*");
foreach ( $parent as $p ) {
echo "/".$p->getName();
}
echo PHP_EOL;
}