Parse SOAP response with PHP/xpath - Cant step further than one node - php

Question

I've tried to read other tutorials & SO responses on this but I just can't seem to make it work :/
I'm able to make the SOAP request and get a response but I can't seem to parse the response.
$result = $client->GetAllAttributes($params);
And the resulting response xml is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<soap:Body>
<GetAllAttributesResponse xmlns="http://connect2.askadmissions.net/webservices/">
<GetAllAttributesResult>
<result>
<code>1</code>
<ErrorMessage />
<returndata>
<attributes>
<attribute>
<type>attribute</type>
<level />
<name>text1321</name>
<mappingname><![CDATA[Extra-Curricular Interest]]></mappingname>
<datatype>Varchar2</datatype>
<size>35</size>
<validationexp />
</attribute>
<attribute> (same as above, several of these are returned</attribute>
</attributes>
</returndata>
</result>
</GetAllAttributesResult>
</GetAllAttributesResponse>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
</xml>
I've tried
$xml = simplexml_load_string($client->__getLastResponse());
print_r($xml);
But it just prints "SimpleXMLElement Object ( ) "
I've tried
$responseXML = $client->__getLastResponse();
$xml = simplexml_load_string($responseXML);
$xml->registerXPathNamespace('soap', 'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
$xml->registerXPathNamespace('hob', 'http://connect2.askadmissions.net/webservices/');
$item = $xml->xpath('//hob:GetAllAttributesResult');
print_r($item);
and I get an array
Array
(
[0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] => <result><code>1</code><ErrorMessage /><returndata><attributes><attribute> <type>attribute</type><level />
etc. (array is very long)
My problem comes when I try to step further into the tree. If I do
$item = $xml->xpath('//hob:GetAllAttributesResult/hob:result');
or
$item = $xml->xpath('//hob:GetAllAttributesResult/hob:code');
I end up with an empty array.
How do I step further into the tree?
Thank you very much for any help.

Answer 1

To access the element's value, you need to access the first element of the array. And you may need to cast it to string to get the string value
e.g. in your example you can do:
$item = $xml->xpath('//hob:GetAllAttributesResult/hob:result/hob:code');
print_r((string)$item[0]);