how to display SimpleXMLElement with php - php

Question

Hi I have never used xml but need to now, so I am trying to quickly learn but struggling with the structure I think. This is just to display the weather at the top of someones website.
I want to display Melbourne weather using this xml link ftp://ftp2.bom.gov.au/anon/gen/fwo/IDV10753.xml
Basically I am trying get Melbourne forecast for 3 days (what ever just something that works) there is a forecast-period array [0] to [6]
I used this print_r to view the structure:
$url = "linkhere";
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($xml);
and tried this just to get something:
$url = "linkhere";
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
$data = (string) $xml->forecast->area[52]->description;
echo $data;
Which gave me nothing (expected 'Melbourne'), obviously I need to learn and I am but if someone could help that would be great.

Answer 1

Because description is an attribute of <area>, you need to use
$data = (string) $xml->forecast->area[52]['description'];
I also wouldn't rely on Melbourne being the 52nd area node (though this is really up to the data maintainers). I'd go by its aac attribute as this appears to be unique, eg
$search = $xml->xpath('forecast/area[#aac="VIC_PT042"]');
if (count($search)) {
$melbourne = $search[0];
echo $melbourne['description'];
}

Answer 2

This is a working example for you:
<?php
$forecastdata = simplexml_load_file('ftp://ftp2.bom.gov.au/anon/gen/fwo/IDV10753.xml','SimpleXMLElement',LIBXML_NOCDATA);
foreach($forecastdata->forecast->area as $singleregion) {
$area = $singleregion['description'];
$weather = $singleregion->{'forecast-period'}->text;
echo $area.': '.$weather.'<hr />';
}
?>
You can edit the aforementioned example to extract the tags and attributes you want.
Always remember that a good practice to understand the structure of your XML object is printing out its content using, for instance, print_r
In the specific case of the XML you proposed, cities are specified through attributes (description). For this reason you have to read also those attributes using ['attribute name'] (see here for more information).
Notice also that the tag {'forecast-period'} is wrapped in curly brackets cause it contains a hyphen, and otherwise it wouldn generate an error.