php - how to check if there is text within XML element - php

Question

:) Let's say that i have that code:
<sample number="1">TEXT</sample>
but sometimes it could be
<sample number"1"/>
Q: How to check if it's self closed or not ? Or I want to check if it's there TEXT within element sample
Note: I'm using that way to retrieve XML doc:
$content = #file_get_contents($url);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($content);

Answer 1

You need to type cast the element to string, then check if it's empty or not.
Here's a quick example:
$test = simplexml_load_string("<test><elem test='12'><sub /><sub /></elem><elem test='12'>hi</elem><elem test='9' /><elem /></test>");
foreach($test as $elem){
echo "\n";
var_dump($elem);
if((string)$elem == '' && $elem->count() == 0)
echo 'Empty';
else
echo 'Full';
}
Will return:
object(SimpleXMLElement)#3 (2) {
["#attributes"]=>
array(1) {
["test"]=>
string(2) "12"
}
["sub"]=>
array(2) {
[0]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#4 (0) {
}
[1]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#5 (0) {
}
}
}
Full
object(SimpleXMLElement)#5 (2) {
["#attributes"]=>
array(1) {
["test"]=>
string(2) "12"
}
[0]=>
string(2) "hi"
}
Full
object(SimpleXMLElement)#3 (1) {
["#attributes"]=>
array(1) {
["test"]=>
string(1) "9"
}
}
Empty
object(SimpleXMLElement)#5 (0) {
}
Empty