SimpleXML and XML collections - how to get the attribute value as an array key? - php

Question

I'm just trying to figure out how to cleanly and nicely transform a XML collection into an appropriate object. See, I've got this very simple XML string :
$x = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<apiKeys>
<apiKey application="app1">HfxaoMBJJ9pLe</apiKey>
<apiKey application="app2">HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHsh</apiKey>
<apiKey application="app3">HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHshTI9qX</apiKey>
</apiKeys>';
Which I transform using :
$O_xmlElement = simplexml_load_string ($x);
This is what I get :
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[apiKey] => Array
(
[0] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLe
[1] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHsh
[2] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHshTI9qX
)
)
And I'd rather have (I expected !) something like :
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[apiKey] => Array
(
['app1'] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLe
['app2'] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHsh
['app3'] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHshTI9qX
)
)
Thank you very much for your help people

Answer 1

SimpleXML won't do what you want automatically. You'll have to build the object yourself:
$O_xmlElement = simplexml_load_string($x);
$myObject = new stdClass();
foreach ($O_xmlElement->apiKey as $apiKey) {
$key = (string) $apiKey['application'];
$myObject->${key} = (string) $apiKey;
}
Refer to the basic usage example in the PHP manual for good examples of dealing with child elements and attributes.
When getting attributes from a SimpleXMLElement, remember that each attribute will be a SimpleXMLElement and not a string. You'll want to explicitly cast each attribute to string before using it as an array key or object property name.

Answer 2

Not sure you can do it exactly as you want it, but you can check out php.net's docs here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.attributes.php
Basically the attributes can be found inside an object attached to each of the apiKey objects.

Answer 3

You can use the following code:
$xml = simplexml_load_string($x);
$newArray = array();
$count=0;
foreach($xml as $value){
$key= (string)($xml->apiKey[$count++]->attributes()->application);
$newArray[$key] = $value[0];
}
$newArray = array_map("trim", $newArray);
print_r($newArray);
This will generate the following output:
Array
(
[app1] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLe
[app2] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHsh
[app3] => HfxaoMBJJ9pLeClsSHshTI9qX
)