PHP SimpleXML parse differently depending on line break - php

Question

I want to parse XML string using SimpleXML on PHP.
$xml = '<root><case1><name> </name></case1><case2><name></name></case2><case3><name>ukits</name></case3></root>';
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$content = simplexml_load_string($xml);
if ($content === false) {
libxml_clear_errors();
}
print_r($content);
$content = objectToArray($content);
print_r($content);
function objectToArray($obj) {
if (is_object($obj)) { $obj = (array) $obj; }
if (count($obj) == 0) { $obj = ''; }
if (is_array($obj)) {
$new = array();
foreach ($obj as $key => $val) {
$new[$key] = objectToArray($val);
}
} else {
$new = $obj;
}
return $new;
}
This code returns:
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[case1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[name] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] =>
)
)
[case2] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
)
)
[case3] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[name] => ukits
)
)
Array
(
[case1] => Array
(
[name] => Array
(
[0] =>
)
)
[case2] => Array
(
[0] =>
)
[case3] => Array
(
[name] => ukits
)
)
There seems to be 2 unexpected problems. In case1, name tag has a OBJECT child (not spaced string). In case2, case2 tag has a numeric array.
But, if the XML string contains line break or space after 'name' tag, the result is different. like this:
$xml = '<root><case1><name> </name>
</case1><case2><name></name>
</case2><case3><name>ukits</name></case3></root>';
The same code returns:
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[case1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[name] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
)
)
[case2] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[name] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
)
)
[case3] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[name] => ukits
)
)
Array
(
[case1] => Array
(
[name] =>
)
[case2] => Array
(
[name] =>
)
[case3] => Array
(
[name] => ukits
)
)
This result is that I want to get.
The point is WHY the results of "same structured XML strings" are differnt depend on line break.
And how do I do If I want to get what I want like second result?
(An input string have to contain no line break.)
Here is my configuration:
CentOS 6.7
PHP 5.4.45
SimpleXML Revision $Id: 16070fc92ad6f69cebb2d52ad3f02794f833ce39 $
libxml2 Version 2.7.6