simplexml_load_string and the unwelcome parse error - php

Question

Update: Casting as an array does the trick. See this response, since I don't have enough clout to upvote :)
I started on this problem with many potential culprits, but after lots of diagnostics the problem is still there and no obvious answers remain.
I want to print the placename "Gaborone", which is located at the first tag under the first tag under the first tag of this API-loaded XML file. How can I parse this to return that content?
<?php
# load the XML file
$test1 = (string)file_get_contents('http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Generic-Documents/IATIBotswanaData.xml');
#throw it into simplexml for parsing
$xmlfile = simplexml_load_string($test1);
#output the parsed text
echo $xmlfile->iati-activity[0]->location[0]->gazetteer-entry;
?>
Which never fails to return this:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';'
I've tried changing the syntax to avoid the hyphens in the tag names as such:
echo $xmlfile["iati-activity"][0]["location"][0]["gazetteer-entry"];
. . . but that returns complete nothingness; no error, no source.
I've also tried debugging based on these otherwise-helpful threads, but none of the solutions have worked. Is there an obvious error in my simplexml addressing?

Answer 1

I've tried changing the syntax to avoid the hyphens in the tag names
as such: echo
$xmlfile["iati-activity"][0]["location"][0]["gazetteer-entry"];
Your problem here is that, object native casting to an array isn't recursive, so that you did that for primary keys only. And yes, your guess is correct - you shouldn't deal with object properties when working with returned value of simplexml_load_string() because of the syntax issues. Instead, you should cast a returned value of it (stdclass) into an array recursively. You can use this function for that:
function object2array($object) {
return json_decode(json_encode($object), true);
}
The rest:
// load the XML file
$test1 = file_get_contents('http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Generic-Documents/IATIBotswanaData.xml');
$xml = simplexml_load_string($test1);
// Cast an object into array, that makes it much easier to work with
$data = object2array($xml);
$data = $data['iati-activity'][0]['location'][0]['gazetteer-entry']; // Works
var_dump($data); // string(8) "Gaborone"

Answer 2

I had a similar problem parsing XML using the simpleXML command until I did the following string replacements:
//$response contains the XML string
$response = str_replace(array("\n", "\r", "\t"), '', $response); //eliminate newlines, carriage returns and tabs
$response = trim(str_replace('"', "'", $response)); // turn double quotes into single quotes
$simpleXml = simplexml_load_string($response);
$json = json_decode(json_encode($simpleXml)); // an extra step I took so I got it into a nice object that is easy to parse and navigate
If that doesn't work, there's some talk over at PHP about CDATA not always being handled properly - PHP version dependent.
You could try this code prior to calling the simplexml_load_string function:
if(strpos($content, '<![CDATA[')) {
function parseCDATA($data) {
return htmlentities($data[1]);
}
$content = preg_replace_callback(
'#<!\[CDATA\[(.*)\]\]>#',
'parseCDATA',
str_replace("\n", " ", $content)
);
}
I've reread this, and I think your error is happening on your final line - try this:
echo $xmlfile->{'iati-activity'}[0]->location[0]->{'gazetteer-entry'};