Can I use SimpleXML & Xpath to directly select an Elements Attribute? - php

Question

i.e. - i want to return a string "yellow" using something like xpath expression "//banana/#color" and the following example xml...
<fruits>
<kiwi color="green" texture="hairy"/>
<banana color="yellow" texture="waxy"/>
</fruits>
$fruits = simplexml_load_string(
'<fruits>
<kiwi color="green" texture="hairy"/>
<banana color="yellow" texture="waxy"/>
</fruits>');
print_r($fruits->xpath('//banana/#color'));
produces
Array
(
[0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[#attributes] => Array
(
[color] => yellow
)
)
)
whereas i would prefer something like...
Array
(
[0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] => yellow
)
)
...so that i don't need to write a special case into the application i'm writing.
thanks very much! :)

Answer 1

I just gave your test a shot because i was curious and I found that it does actually produce the string value yellow when converted to string.
$fruits = simplexml_load_string(
'<fruits>
<kiwi color="green" texture="hairy"/>
<banana color="yellow" texture="waxy"/>
</fruits>');
$found = $fruits->xpath('//banana/#color');
echo $found[0];
It would seem this is just how SimpleXmlElement attribute nodes are represented. So you can use this as (string) $found[0] if you are not printing/echoing it directly.
Of course if your depending on the value remaining a SimpleXMLElement then that could be an issue I suppose. But i would think just remembering to cast as string when you go to use the node later would still be doable.
IF you really need a detailed interface for Nodes that supports an Attribute as a node then you may want to just switch to DOMDocument. You code will get more verbose, but the implementation is more clear.