PHP SimpleXMLElement, get element and its children as XML

Question

Suppose I have the following XML:

<Book>
    <bookname>thename</bookname>
    <chapters>
        <chapter>
            <name>chapter1</name>
        </chapter>
         <chapter>
            <name>chapter2</name>
        </chapter>
    </chapters>
</Book>

How can I get an XML as follows:

    <chapters>
        <chapter>
            <name>chapter1</name>
        </chapter>
         <chapter>
            <name>chapter2</name>
        </chapter>
    </chapters>

One way is to manually remove unwanted elements eg

$resultXML = new SimpleXMLElement($inputXML);
unset($resultXML->bookname);
$resultXML = $resultXML->asXml();
echo format_result($resultXML,$format);

But if I have a large XML with many unwanted notes, this is tedious. Any idea who to extract the required element using its name?

Answer 1

Here we go:

<?php

$inputXML ="
<Book>
    <bookname>thename</bookname>
    <chapters>
        <chapter>
            <name>chapter1</name>
        </chapter>
        <chapter>
            <name>chapter2</name>
        </chapter>
    </chapters>
</Book>
";

/* Load from file:
$parseXML = simplexml_load_file( $fileURL );
*/
$parseXML = simplexml_load_string( $inputXML );
$chapters = $parseXML->chapters->asXML();

echo $chapters;

?>

Note: Your xml must be well-formated, currently your <Book> has no closing tag.

Answer 2

The sub-nodes of your XML are themselves SimpleXMLElements – so you can just call the axXml method on them as well.

Since you only have one chapters node in your XML, simply

$resultXML->chapters->asXml()

will do.