php parsing xml formatted data - php

Question

I'm trying to parse an xml data that I'm getting via an api call. I can use file_get_contents to read into a string but simpleXML_load_string seems to fail to read it. I can save it to a file and then simpleXML_load_file works. But I would rather not write the contents to a file. I can't seem to understand how to use DOM or XMLParse with this either. I'm new to PHP and parsing XML. The output data from the api call is below.
<Search>
<DS_Rating>DS3</DS_Rating>
<Overall>17.5</Overall>
<LargestGiftLow>0</LargestGiftLow>
<LargestGiftHigh>0</LargestGiftHigh>
<EstimatedCapacityRange>I - $15,000 - $24,999</EstimatedCapacityRange>
<EstimatedCapacity>20452</EstimatedCapacity>
<RealEstateEst>270073</RealEstateEst>
<RealEstateCount>1</RealEstateCount>
<LikelyMatchesCount>0</LikelyMatchesCount>
<LikelyMatchesTotal>0</LikelyMatchesTotal>
<FndBoard></FndBoard>
<GSBoard></GSBoard>
<PoliticalLikelyCount>0</PoliticalLikelyCount>
<PoliticalLikelyTotal>0</PoliticalLikelyTotal>
<BusinessRevenues>0</BusinessRevenues>
<SECStockValue>0</SECStockValue>
<SECInsider></SECInsider>
<MarketGuide></MarketGuide>
<IRS990PF></IRS990PF>
<RealEstateTrust></RealEstateTrust>
<MarketGuideComp>0</MarketGuideComp>
<MarketGuideOptions>0</MarketGuideOptions>
<BusinessAffiliation></BusinessAffiliation>
<Pension></Pension>
<PensionAssets>0</PensionAssets>
<CorpTech></CorpTech>
<Pilot></Pilot>
<AirplaneOwner></AirplaneOwner>
<Boat></Boat>
<submit_time>2014-03-11 15:48:45</submit_time>
</Search>
Figured out that the issue was that what I was seeing in the browser was actually a php output with html_entiity encoded. I was able to process it with the code below which let me load it with simplexml.
$rawxml = html_entity_decode($rawxml);
$rawxml = str_replace(array(' ', "<pre>"), '', $rawxml);
$rawxml = utf8_encode($rawxml);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($rawxml);

Answer 1

If you XML is in a file use
simplexml_load_file
if you have it in a string use
simplexml_load_string
Then you can use the following code to access it.
<?php
$yourxml = simplexml_load_file('your.xml');
echo $yourxml->search[0]->DS_Rating;
?>
This would then output
DS3
to the browser via the 'echo' in your code. I hope this points you in the correct direction.

Answer 2

Try to use this:
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>'.$yourXMLString);

Answer 3

In DOM you load the XML into a DOMDocument and create a DOMXpath instance for it.
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXml($xmlString);
//$dom->load($xmlFile);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
DOMXpath::evaluate() is used to fetch data from the DOM.
$rating = $dom->evaluate('string(/Search/DS_Rating)');
An Xpath expression like /Search/DS_rating always returns a node list. You can use foreach() to iterate it. The string() function in Xpath takes the first node from the list and casts it into a string. If here is not node in the list the result is an empty string.
$xmlString = <<<'XML'
<Search>
<DS_Rating>DS3</DS_Rating>
<Overall>17.5</Overall>
</Search>
XML;
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXml($xmlString);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
var_dump(
$xpath ->evaluate('string(/Search/DS_Rating)')
);
Output: https://eval.in/118921
string(3) "DS3"