XML cleaning [xml:space] using PHP - php

Question

How to remove all nodes like xml:space="preserve" from XML, to get clean result
old XML
<table>
<actor xml:space="preserve"> </actor>
</table>
I want result be like this
<table>
<actor> </actor>
</table>
EDIT
this the php code
function produce_XML_object_tree($raw_XML) {
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
try {
$xmlTree = new SimpleXMLElement($raw_XML);
} catch (Exception $e) {
// Something went wrong.
$error_message = 'SimpleXMLElement threw an exception.';
foreach(libxml_get_errors() as $error_line) {
$error_message .= "\t" . $error_line->message;
}
trigger_error($error_message);
return false;
}
return $xmlTree;
}
$xml_feed_url = "www.xmlpage.com/web.xml";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $xml_feed_url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$cont = produce_XML_object_tree($xml);
echo json_encode($cont);

Answer 1

Use an xpath expression to locate the attributes and remove them.
Example:
//$xml = your xml string
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML($xml);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
foreach ($xpath->query('//#xml:space') as $attr) {
$attr->ownerElement->removeAttributeNode($attr);
}
echo $dom->saveXML();
Output:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<table>
<actor> </actor>
</table>
This will remove any xml:space attributes. If you want to target only those xml:space attributes that have a value of "preserve", change the query to //#xml:space[.="preserve"].

Answer 2

$string = str_ireplace('xml:space="preserve"','',$string);
function produce_XML_object_tree($raw_XML) {
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
try {
$xmlTree = new SimpleXMLElement($raw_XML);
} catch (Exception $e) {
// Something went wrong.
$error_message = 'SimpleXMLElement threw an exception.';
foreach(libxml_get_errors() as $error_line) {
$error_message .= "\t" . $error_line->message;
}
trigger_error($error_message);
return false;
}
return str_ireplace('xml:space="preserve"','',$xmlTree;);
}
$xml_feed_url = "www.xmlpage.com/web.xml";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $xml_feed_url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$cont = produce_XML_object_tree($xml);
echo json_encode($cont);

Answer 3

As long as you're concerned to remove all attribute-nodes that are with a namespace prefix, you can do so by selecting them via xpath and remove them from the XML document.
The xpath query for all attributes with a prefix can be obtained by comparing the name (that is prefix and local-name) with the local-name (that is the local-name only). If it differs you've got a match:
//#*[name(.) != local-name(.)]
Querying specific nodes with SimpleXML and XPath to delete them has been outlined earlier as an answer to the question Remove a child with a specific attribute, in SimpleXML for PHP (Nov 2008) and is pretty straight-forward by using the SimpleXML-Self-Reference:
$xml = simplexml_load_string($buffer);
foreach ($xml->xpath('//#*[name(.) != local-name(.)]') as $attr) {
unset($attr[0]);
}
The self-reference here is to remove the attribute $attr via $attr[0].
Full Example:
$buffer = <<<XML
<table>
<actor class="foo" xml:space="preserve"> </actor>
</table>
XML;
$xml = simplexml_load_string($buffer);
foreach ($xml->xpath('//#*[name(.) != local-name(.)]') as $attr) {
unset($attr[0]);
}
echo $xml->asXML();
Example Output:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<table>
<actor class="foo"> </actor>
</table>