SimpleXML addChild() adding child node titles not values - php

Question

When attempting to use SimpleXML's addChild() method towards the end of the code block below and printing the feed, the output is not the required result. When tested with a string value, addChild() correctly outputs both the name of the node and the value, however I'm not sure if the array or the object inside it are actually within the scope of the first foreach loop.
I want to access the 'name' and 'type' properties of the $nameType object and output them to my main feed with addChild().
//Turns base feed into SimpleXML object.
$feed = simplexml_load_string($xml);
foreach($feed->property as $property) {
//Gets latitude and longitude from each property.
$latitude = $property->latitude;
$longitude = $property->longitude;
//Adds latitude and longitude values into Google Places API URL.
$googleURL = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/nearbysearch/xml?location='.$latitude.','.$longitude.'&radius=1000&types=train_station&key=my-google-key';
//Gets XML from Google Places and parses into SimpleXML Object.
$googleXMLfile = file_get_contents($googleURL);
$googleXMLdata = simplexml_load_string($googleXMLfile);
//Array for limiting number of results.
$googleStoredXMLDataArray = array();
foreach ($googleXMLdata->result as $result) {
//Assigns result 'name' and 'type' to variables.
$name = $result->name;
$type = $result->type;
//Creates object to store name and type together.
$nameType = new StdClass();
$nameType->name = $name;
$nameType->type = $type;
//Pushes object to array and outputs results limiting feed to 3 results.
array_push($googleStoredXMLDataArray, $nameType);
$output = array_slice($googleStoredXMLDataArray, 0, 3);
}
//Adding proximityTo destination to property nodes in the feed parser.
//Error - needs to pull properties from object inside the array.
$property->addChild('proximityTo_name', '$googleStoredXMLDataArray->$nameType->name');
$property->addChild('proximityTo_type', '$googleStoredXMLDataArray->$nameType->type');
}
print_r($feed);

Answer 1

Do not forget, $googleStoredXMLDataArrayis an indexed array of stdClass objects. Getting the value of these objects in the array is done with an index like this:
$googleStoredXMLDataArray[$index]->name;
$googleStoredXMLDataArray[$index]->type;
where $index is between 0 and count($googleStoredXMLDataArray)-1. I believe 0 is the most accurate hit and the last value the most inaccurate. To get the last value (most inaccurate), use this:
$i = count( $googleStoredXMLDataArray ) - 1;
$property->addChild('proximityTo_name', $googleStoredXMLDataArray[$i]->name);
$property->addChild('proximityTo_type', $googleStoredXMLDataArray[$i]->type);
Rewrite the last part should do the trick of adding ALL proximity values:
foreach( $googleStoredXMLDataArray as $prox ) {
$property->addChild('proximityTo_name', $prox->name);
$property->addChild('proximityTo_type', $prox->type);
}
If you want to skip the XML parsing, and just parse an array of data you can always use JSON instead:
$googleURL = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/nearbysearch/json'
. '?location='.$latitude.',' . $longitude
. '&radius=1000&types=train_station&key=my-google-key';
$googleObject = json_decode( file_get_contents($googleURL), true );