creating and outputting xml - php

Question

I have this code:
$dom = new DOMDocument(); // new dom object
$dom->formatOutput = TRUE; //tidy the output
$root = $dom->appendChild($dom->createElement('PaymentNotificationResponse'));
$sxe = simplexml_import_dom( $dom );
$xml_pay = $sxe->addChild('Payments');
$paymnt = $xml_pay->addChild('Payment');
$paymnt->addChild('PaymentLogId','123');
$paymnt->addChild('Status', '0');
print_r($sxe);
This is supposed to print something like this:
<PaymentNotificationResponse>
<Payments>
<Payment>
<PaymentLogId>123</PaymentLogId>
<Status>0</Status>
</Payment>
</Payments>
</PaymentNotificationResponse>
But what i get is this:
SimpleXMLElement Object ( [Payments] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [Payment] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [PaymentLogId] => 123 [Status] => 0 ) ) )
Even when i use
print_r($sxe->asXML())
it just gives
1230

Answer 1

Simply doing:
echo $sxe->asXML();
Should do the trick.
Notice that unless you have the right headers, the browser might read it as HTML. You then have to inspect the source to see the actual XML.

Answer 2

To print the correct output you should print $sxe->asXML(), but if you want to have the output shown in the XML format on the browser you should also print the header in php:
header('Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8')
for the sake of the example check the code bellow:
$dom = new DOMDocument(); // new dom object
$dom->formatOutput = TRUE; //tidy the output
$root = $dom->appendChild($dom->createElement('PaymentNotificationResponse'));
$sxe = simplexml_import_dom( $dom );
$xml_pay = $sxe->addChild('Payments');
$paymnt = $xml_pay->addChild('Payment');
$paymnt->addChild('PaymentLogId','123');
$paymnt->addChild('Status', '0');
print_r( header('Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8') . $sxe->asXML());