SimpleXml can't access children - php

Question

This is a snippet of XML that I'm working with:
<category name="pizzas">
<item name="Tomato & Cheese">
<price size="small">5.50</price>
<price size="large">9.75</price>
</item>
<item name="Onions">
<price size="small">6.85</price>
<price size="large">10.85</price>
</item>
<item name="Peppers">
<price size="small">6.85</price>
<price size="large">10.85</price>
</item>
<item name="Broccoli">
<price size="small">6.85</price>
<price size="large">10.85</price>
</item>
</category>
This is what my php looks like:
$xml = $this->xml;
$result = $xml->xpath('category/#name');
foreach($result as $element) {
$this->category[(string)$element] = $element->xpath('item');
}
everything works ok except $element->xpath('item');
I also tried using: $element->children(); as well as other xpath queries, but they all return null.
Why can't I access children of a category?

Answer 1

It looks like you're trying to build a tree based on categories, keyed by category name. To do that, you should change your code to look like this:
$xml = $this->xml;
//Here, match the category tags themselves, not the name attribute.
$result = $xml->xpath('category');
foreach($result as $element) {
//Iterate through the categories. Get their name attributes for the
//category array key, and assign the item xpath result to that.
$this->category[(string)$element['name']] = $element->xpath('item');
}
With your original code here: $result = $xml->xpath('category/#name'); your result was the name attribute nodes, which, as attributes, cannot have children.
Now if you simply wanted a list of all items, you could use $xml->xpath('category/items'), but that doesn't appear to be what you had wanted.