PHP ODATA XML parsing with SimpleXMLElement

Question

I have the following being returned as XML from source:

<content type="application/xml">
  <m:properties>
    <d:ID>30</d:ID>
    <d:Name></d:Name>
    <d:ProfileImageUrl>default.png</d:ProfileImageUrl>
    <d:ThumbnailUrl>default.png</d:ThumbnailUrl>
    <d:FavoriteCount m:type="Edm.Int64">0</d:FavoriteCount>
    <d:ViewCount m:type="Edm.Int64">12030</d:ViewCount>
    <d:LastMonthViewCount m:type="Edm.Int64">1104</d:LastMonthViewCount>
    <d:LastWeekViewCount m:type="Edm.Int64">250</d:LastWeekViewCount>
    <d:LastDayViewCount m:type="Edm.Int64">21</d:LastDayViewCount>
    <d:CreationDate m:type="Edm.DateTime">2011-03-28T13:46:54.227</d:CreationDate>
    <d:Enabled m:type="Edm.Boolean">true</d:Enabled>
    <d:UrlSafeName>t-boz</d:UrlSafeName>
    <d:LastDayFavoriteCount m:type="Edm.Int64">0</d:LastDayFavoriteCount>
    <d:LastWeekFavoriteCount m:type="Edm.Int64">0</d:LastWeekFavoriteCount>
    <d:LastMonthFavoriteCount m:type="Edm.Int64">0</d:LastMonthFavoriteCount>
    <d:IsOnTour m:type="Edm.Boolean">false</d:IsOnTour>
    <d:TodayRank m:type="Edm.Int32">6272</d:TodayRank>
    <d:WeekRank m:type="Edm.Int32">6851</d:WeekRank>
    <d:MonthRank m:type="Edm.Int32">6915</d:MonthRank>
    <d:AllTimeRank m:type="Edm.Int32">7973</d:AllTimeRank>
  </m:properties>
</content>

I am retrieving this via file_get_contents then creating via SIMPLEXMLElement. However I am unable to access the content->properties fields (ie. ID, Name, ProfileImageUrl, etc). All I see from the SIMPLEXMLElement is the following:

[content] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [@attributes] => Array ( [type] => application/xml ) )

Any thoughts on how I get this data?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Accessing namespaced elements is easy with SimpleXML, you just tell the children() method which namespace to look in.

A super basic example would look like:

$xml = <<<XML
<content type="application/xml" xmlns:m="urn:m" xmlns:d="urn:d">
  <m:properties>
    <d:ID>30</d:ID>
    <d:ProfileImageUrl>default.png</d:ProfileImageUrl>
  </m:properties>
</content>
XML;

$content      = simplexml_load_string($xml);

// Quick way
// $properties = $content->children('m', TRUE)->properties->children('d', TRUE);
// echo $properties->ProfileImageUrl;

// Step by step
$m_elements   = $content->children('m', TRUE);
$m_properties = $m_elements->properties;
$d_elements   = $m_properties->children('d', TRUE);
echo $d_elements->ProfileImageUrl;