select first child node of root node in XML file using php

Question

I'm new to XML and have so far managed to obtain the root node of an XML using this in php...

function xmlRootNode($xmlfile){
    $xml = simplexml_load_string(file_get_contents($xmlfile));
    $xml = $xml->getName();
    echo $xml;
}

And what I now want to do is use that root node to find out the name of its child node. For example, a file with the below would output 'food' as the root using the above function. How would I now use that to return its childs name 'fruit'?

<food>
  <fruit>
    <type>apples</type>
  </fruit>
</food>

Ultimately what I'm trying to do is find out the child node name of the root node so I can then use it in another function that counts how many there are. Been googling and messing around with different ideas but think I'm missing a simple process somewhere so any ideas would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try

/* get list of fruits under food */
$fruits = $xml->children();

/* or treat the $xml as array */
foreach ($xml as $fruit)
{
   /* your processing */
}

Additional, the below is redundant,

$xml = simplexml_load_string(file_get_contents($xmlfile));

switch it to

$xml = simplexml_load_file($xmlfile);

Answer 2

// The following code block illustrates how you can get at the name of each child
$columnCDValues = array();
foreach ($simpleXMLElement->profile->children() as $child)
{
    $name = $child->getName();
    $value = $simpleXMLElement->profile->$name;         
    $columnCDValues[$child->getName()] = $value;
}