simplexml not sure how to access attribute value of tag

Question

I have an xml file. Here's how it's formed:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<export>
    <config>
        <exported_values>
            <value1>Dog</value1>
            <value2>Cat</value2>
            <value3>Bird</value3>
            <value4>Mouse</value4>
        </exported_values>

        <item name="orange" text="this is item 1" />
        <item name="blue" text="this is item 2" />
        <item name="yellow" text="this is item 3" />
        <item name="green" text="this is item 4" />
    </config>
</export>

How can i access the value of name inside item? I tried this without luck:

if( ! $xml = simplexml_load_file('xml/test.xml') ){
    echo 'unable to load XML file';
} else {
    foreach( $xml as $item )
    {
        echo 'item: '.$item->config->item['name'].'<br />';
    } 
}

But that does not return anything. Did i miss something?

Answer 1

Your problem is in the way you're trying to access the attributes from your XML nodes. Just update your foreach code to:

foreach( $xml->config->item as $item )
{
    echo 'item: ', $item->attributes()->name, '<br />';
}

Output:

item: orange<br />item: blue<br />item: yellow<br />item: green<br />

Working demo .

Answer 2

You have $item->config->item and $item the wrong way around: the <config> item only appears once, so accessing it every time round the loop would make no sense.

$xml represents the <export> node, and you want to loop over each of the several <item> nodes in the single <config> node, so the loop should be:

foreach( $xml->config->item as $item )

Then $item will represent each particular <item> node in the loop, so accessing the attribute will be as simple as:

echo $item['name'];

Here's a complete live example .