Trying to extract elements from XML and place into an Array - php

Question

I've created a simple XML document that will hold information on numerous cities.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<config>
<city>
<id>London</id>
</city>
<city>
<id>New York</id>
</city>
</config>
I'm trying to extract the city elements and place them into an array. I have the following so far and the output is simply Array when I call the function.
<?php
$configFile = 'cityConfig.xml';
function getCityConfig($configFile) {
$xml = new SimpleXmlElement(file_get_contents("cityConfig.xml"));
$cities = array();
$cityId = $xml->city[0]->id;
array_push($cities, $cityId);
$cityId = $xml->city[1]->id;
array_push($cities, $cityId);
//var_dump($cities);
return $cities;
}
//print_r(getCityConfig($configFile));
echo getCityConfig($configFile);
?>
var_dump suggests that values are being added into the array.
array(2) { [0]=> object(SimpleXMLElement)#2 (1) { [0]=> string(6) "London" } [1]=> object(SimpleXMLElement)#4 (1) { [0]=> string(8) "New York" } } Array
I'm trying to achieve something along these lines.
$cities = array(
'London',
'New York',
'Paris'
);
The array indexes are called in my index.php to display content.
$pageIntroductionContent = 'The following page brings twin cities together. Here you will find background information on ' . $cities[0] . ', ' . $cities[1] . ' and ' . $cities[2] . '.';
Any ideas where I'm going wrong?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The fact is that in SimpleXMLElement object, all the data is represented as an object, including attributes (as your var_dump suggests, in fact). So, you can get strings by casting these object, because they implement a _toString() method I think. Try:
$cityId = (string) $xml->city[0]->id;
It should work.