Specific field from XML into PHP - php

Question

I am pretty new to XML sheets in combination with PHP. I am trying to pull data from an XML file that is being returned to me via SOAP call.
My XML is being returned as this.
commented out some of the details
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns="urn:partner.soap.sforce.com" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<soapenv:Body>
<loginResponse>
<result>
<metadataServerUrl>https://...-api.salesforce.com/service...</metadataServerUrl>
<passwordExpired>false</passwordExpired>
<sandbox>false</sandbox>
<serverUrl>https://...--api.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/21.0/0...</serverUrl>
<sessionId>....</sessionId>
<userId>....</userId>
<userInfo>
<accessibilityMode>false</accessibilityMode>
<currencySymbol>€</currencySymbol> ... </userInfo>
</result>
</loginResponse>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
So I am trying to pull out of this the sessionID
// UP HERE SOAP CALL --- return data
.......
} else {
$response = curl_exec($soap_do);
curl_close($soap_do);
// print($response); <-- see result XML
// grabbing the sessionid
$xmlresponse = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
$test = $xmlresponse->result->sessionId['value'];
echo $test;
}
This returns blank, but when I start adding the LoginResponse and the Soapenv (body and envelope), i get an error about that I am trying to get a propperty of non-object. I am not sure what I am doing wrong here.

Answer 1

With SimpleXML you can use SimpleXMLElement::children to find children by an XML namespace (here soapenv).
For your case it would something like
$xmlresponse = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
$response = $xmlresponse->children('soapenv', true)->Body->children('', true)->loginResponse->result->sessionId;
var_dump($response);
Which results in
object(SimpleXMLElement)#4 (1) {
[0]=>
string(4) "...."
}

Answer 2

I want to say that you should use SoapClient(http://php.net/manual/tr/class.soapclient.php) for Soap Calls but if you don't want to use it, here is how you can parse this XML :
$xmlresponse = new SimpleXMLElement(str_ireplace([':Envelope', ':Body'], '', $response));
$test = $xmlresponse->soapenv->loginResponse->result->sessionId['value'];
echo $test;