Using XML Data as Array - php

Question

I have a problem, I'm trying to get data from http://www.acquaintcrm.co.uk/propertyfunctions/propertysearch.asmx?op=GetDataV8
I have made the request and output the data to a file, properties.xml
The file gets filled with data, but I just dont know how to use that data, I would like to convert the xml data into an array, but I honestly don't know where to start.
My code
$xml_data = '<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Body>
<GetDataV8 xmlns="http://www.AcquaintCRM.co.uk/propertyfunctions/">
<strSitePrefix>STDZ</strSitePrefix>
<intSiteID>-1</intSiteID>
<intPropertyID>0</intPropertyID>
<intPropertyDevelopmentID>0</intPropertyDevelopmentID>
<bytBedrooms>0</bytBedrooms>
<decMinPrice>0</decMinPrice>
<decMaxPrice>0</decMaxPrice>
<bytTenure>1</bytTenure>
<intCommercial>-1</intCommercial>
<bytPropertyAge>0</bytPropertyAge>
<intRentalTerms>0</intRentalTerms>
<bytFeaturedCount>0</bytFeaturedCount>
<strAreas></strAreas>
<strTypes></strTypes>
<bytSortOrder>0</bytSortOrder>
<bytUseCDataTags>0</bytUseCDataTags>
</GetDataV8>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
';
$url = "http://www.acquaintcrm.co.uk/propertyfunctions/propertysearch.asmx?op=GetDataV8";
$headers = array(
"POST * HTTP/1.1",
"Content-type: text/xml;charset=\"utf-8\"",
"Accept: text/xml",
"Cache-Control: no-cache",
"Pragma: no-cache",
"Content-length: ".strlen($xml_data),
"SOAPAction: http://www.AcquaintCRM.co.uk/propertyfunctions/GetDataV8",
);
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 60);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $xml_data);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
if (curl_errno($ch))
{
echo 'Error: ';
echo curl_error($ch);
}
else
{
curl_close($ch);
$xml = file_put_contents('properties.xml', $response);
$xml = simplexml_load_file('properties.xml');
print_r($xml);
}
The XML file can be viewed here
http://manchester.studentdigz.com/properties.xml
Thank you all in advance, I appreciate all help!

Answer 1

You can use php simplexml (http://php.net/manual/en/book.simplexml.php) to load the string in an object.
Note that if you really want an array you could as well do :
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlstring)->children('http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/')->children('Body');
$json = json_encode($xml);
$array = json_decode($json,TRUE);
echo "<pre>";
echo "xml object : <br/>";
var_dump($xml);
echo "<hr/>";
echo "json string : <br/>";
var_dump($json);
echo "<hr/>";
echo "array : <br/>";
var_dump($array);