PHP get XML rootNode content as String - php

Question

How can i get the content of an XML as string?
I have a xml like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<section>
<paragraph>some content</paragraph>
<custom>some more content</custom>
</section>
and i want the content of section as a string like this:
<paragraph>some content</paragraph>
<custom>some more content</custom>
every doc i read so far only explains how to get the content of a subnode but not of the root node.

Answer 1

It can be achieved using DOMDocument (Press here to See it in action)
$xmlStr = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<section>
<paragraph>some content</paragraph>
<custom>some more content</custom>
</section>
';
$xml = new DOMDocument();
$xml->loadXML($xmlStr);
if($xml->childNodes->length > 0) {
foreach($xml->childNodes->item(0)->childNodes as $rootChildNode){
echo $xml->saveXML($rootChildNode);
}
}

Answer 2

You can use xml parser for create an array and work with it. For example:
<?php
$xml = <<<XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<section>
<paragraph>some content</paragraph>
<custom>some more content</custom>
</section>
XML;
$values = [];
$p = xml_parser_create();
xml_parser_set_option($p, XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING, 0);
xml_parse_into_struct($p, $xml, $values);
xml_parser_free($p);
var_dump($values);
http://php.net/manual/en/ref.xml.php