Parse XML value based on attribute - php

Question

<ITEMS>
<ITEM ItemID="XY">
<ItemSearchName />
<ITEMDESCRIPTION>
<DESCRIPTION descriptionType="T" descriptionTypeTitle="Short" languageId="1" language="English">English description</DESCRIPTION>
<DESCRIPTION descriptionType="T" descriptionTypeTitle="Short" languageId="2" language="France">Fance description</DESCRIPTION>
</ITEMDESCRIPTION>
<ItemType>B</ItemType>
<ItemDepartment />
<ITEMDIMENSIONS>
<ItemDimensionUOM>m</ItemDimensionUOM>
</ITEMDIMENSIONS>
<ItemGrossWeihgt>0.00</ItemGrossWeihgt>
</ITEM>
</ITEMS>
This is an example of my XML file parsed with simplexml method. I do read ItemID attribute value with this code (just an example):
$item->attributes()->ItemID
My question is, how to access DESCRIPTION under DESCRIPTION attribute languageId = 1?
I can do this with foreach:
foreach ($item->ITEMDESCRIPTION->DESCRIPTION as $desc) {
if ($desc['languageId'] == '1') {
echo "<td>" . $desc . "</td>";
}
}
but I would prefer not to use foreach.
Another possibility is this:
$desc2 = $item->ITEMDESCRIPTION->DESCRIPTION[1];
but this is just the first DESCRIPTION and not the description with attribute languageId = 1.
Thanks for any suggestions!

Answer 1

You can also use xpath to get the particular value. Example:
$xml_string = '<ITEMS> <ITEM ItemID="XY"> <ItemSearchName /> <ITEMDESCRIPTION> <DESCRIPTION descriptionType="T" descriptionTypeTitle="Short" languageId="1" language="English">English description</DESCRIPTION> <DESCRIPTION descriptionType="T" descriptionTypeTitle="Short" languageId="2" language="France">Fance description</DESCRIPTION> </ITEMDESCRIPTION> <ItemType>B</ItemType> <ItemDepartment /> <ITEMDIMENSIONS> <ItemDimensionUOM>m</ItemDimensionUOM> </ITEMDIMENSIONS> <ItemGrossWeihgt>0.00</ItemGrossWeihgt> </ITEM></ITEMS>';
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml_string);
$value = $xml->xpath('//ITEMDESCRIPTION/DESCRIPTION[#languageId="1"]')[0];
echo (string) $value; // English description
Or just simple foreach:
foreach($xml->ITEM->ITEMDESCRIPTION->DESCRIPTION as $desc) {
if($desc->attributes()['languageId'] == 1) {
echo (string) $desc; // English description
}
}