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    SimpleXMLElement::children

    (PHP 5, PHP 7)

    SimpleXMLElement::children — Finds children of given node

    Descrierea

    public SimpleXMLElement::children ( string $ns = ? , bool $is_prefix = false ) : SimpleXMLElement

    This method finds the children of an element. The result follows normal iteration rules.

    Notă: SimpleXML a creat o regulă de a adăuga proprietăți iterative la majoritatea metodelor. Ele nu pot fi vizualizate cu ajutorul var_dump() sau orice altceva ce poate examina obiecte.

    Parametri

    ns

    An XML namespace.

    is_prefix

    If is_prefix is true, ns will be regarded as a prefix. If false, ns will be regarded as a namespace URL.

    Valorile întoarse

    Returns a SimpleXMLElement element, whether the node has children or not.

    Exemple

    Example #1 Traversing a children() pseudo-array

    <?php
    $xml     = new SimpleXMLElement(
    '<person>
     <child role="son">
      <child role="daughter"/>
     </child>
     <child role="daughter">
      <child role="son">
       <child role="son"/>
      </child>
     </child>
    </person>'    );

    foreach (    $xml->children() as $second_gen) {
        echo     ' The person begot a ' . $second_gen['role'];

        foreach (    $second_gen->children() as $third_gen) {
            echo     ' who begot a ' . $third_gen['role'] . ';';

            foreach (    $third_gen->children() as $fourth_gen) {
                echo     ' and that ' . $third_gen['role'] .
                        ' begot a ' . $fourth_gen['role'];
            }
        }
    }
    ?>

    Exemplul de mai sus va afișa:

    The person begot a son who begot a daughter; The person
begot a daughter who begot a son; and that son begot a son

    Example #2 Using namespaces

    <?php
    $xml     = '<example xmlns:foo="my.foo.urn">
      <foo:a>Apple</foo:a>
      <foo:b>Banana</foo:b>
      <c>Cherry</c>
    </example>'    ;

    $sxe = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);

    $kids = $sxe->children('foo');
    var_dump(count($kids));

    $kids = $sxe->children('foo', TRUE);
    var_dump(count($kids));

    $kids = $sxe->children('my.foo.urn');
    var_dump(count($kids));

    $kids = $sxe->children('my.foo.urn', TRUE);
    var_dump(count($kids));

    $kids = $sxe->children();
    var_dump(count($kids));
    ?> 
    int(0)
int(2)
int(2)
int(0)
int(1)

    Note

    SimpleXMLElement::children() returns a node object no matter if the current node has children or not. Use count() on the return value to see if there are any children. As of PHP 5.3.0, SimpleXMLElement::count() may be used instead.

    A se vedea și

    add a note add a note

    User Contributed Notes 15 notes

    up
    12
    aero
    17 years ago
    Here's a simple, recursive, function to transform XML data into pseudo E4X syntax ie. root.child.value = foobar

    <?php
    error_reporting    (E_ALL);

    $xml = new SimpleXMLElement(
    '<Patriarch>
       <name>Bill</name>
       <wife>
         <name>Vi</name>
       </wife>
       <son>
         <name>Bill</name>
       </son>
       <daughter>
         <name>Jeri</name>
         <husband>
           <name>Mark</name>
         </husband>
         <son>
           <name>Greg</name>
         </son>
         <son>
           <name>Tim</name>
         </son>    
         <son>
           <name>Mark</name>
         </son>    
         <son>
           <name>Josh</name>
             <wife>
               <name>Kristine</name>
             </wife>
             <son>
               <name>Blake</name>
             </son>
             <daughter>
               <name>Liah</name>
             </daughter>
         </son>
       </daughter>
    </Patriarch>'    );

    RecurseXML($xml);

    function     RecurseXML($xml,$parent="")
    {
           $child_count = 0;
       foreach(    $xml as $key=>$value)
       {
              $child_count++;    
          if(    RecurseXML($value,$parent.".".$key) == 0)  // no childern, aka "leaf node"
              {
             print(    $parent . "." . (string)$key . " = " . (string)$value . "<BR>\n");       
          }    
       }
       return     $child_count;
    }

    ?>

    The output....

    .name = Bill
    .wife.name = Vi
    .son.name = Bill
    .daughter.name = Jeri
    .daughter.husband.name = Mark
    .daughter.son.name = Greg
    .daughter.son.name = Tim
    .daughter.son.name = Mark
    .daughter.son.name = Josh
    .daughter.son.wife.name = Kristine
    .daughter.son.son.name = Blake
    .daughter.son.daughter.name = Liah
    up
    7
    Sebastian
    19 years ago
    Just a quick addition:

    If you need to access a child node which contains a dash, you need to encapsulate it with {""}.

    For example:
    <?php
    foreach ($domain->domain-listing as $product) {
    }
    ?>

    The example above doesn't work because of the dash. But instead you need to use:
    <?php
    foreach ($domain->{"domain-listing"} as $product) {
    }
    ?>

    At least for me the second example works perfectly fine.
    up
    2
    transglobe at gmx dot de
    16 years ago
    I made a slightly differnt approch towards the RecurseXML function. Beeing hungry I had problems with the code, as it did just overwrite two <maincourse>s. So here is what I did:

    <?php

    $xml     = new SimpleXMLElement(
    '<meal>
       <type>Lunch</type>
       <time>12:30</time>
       <menu>
         <entree>salad</entree>
         <maincourse>
            <part>ships</part>
            <part>steak</part>
         </maincourse>
         <maincourse>
            <part>fisch</part>
            <part>rice</part>
         </maincourse>
         <maincourse>
            <part>wine</part>
            <part>cheese</part>
         </maincourse>
       </menu>
    </meal>'    );

    $vals = array();
    RecurseXML($xml,$vals);

    foreach(    $vals as $key=>$value)
      print(    "{$key} = {$value}<BR>\n");

    function     RecurseXML($xml,&$vals,$parent="") {

          $childs=0;
          $child_count=-1; # Not realy needed.
          $arr=array();
            foreach (    $xml->children() as $key=>$value) {
                    if (    in_array($key,$arr)) {
                                $child_count++;
                    } else {
                                $child_count=0;
                    }
                        $arr[]=$key;
                        $k=($parent == "") ? "$key.$child_count" : "$parent.$key.$child_count";
                        $childs=RecurseXML($value,$vals,$k);
                    if (    $childs==0) {
                                $vals[$k]= (string)$value;
                    }
            }

      return     $childs;
    }

    ?>
    Output is like this:
    type.0 = Lunch
    time.0 = 12:30
    menu.0.entree.0 = salad
    menu.0.maincourse.0.part.0 = ships
    menu.0.maincourse.0.part.1 = steak
    menu.0.maincourse.0 =
    menu.0.maincourse.1.part.0 = fisch
    menu.0.maincourse.1.part.1 = rice
    menu.0.maincourse.1 =
    menu.0.maincourse.2.part.0 = wine
    menu.0.maincourse.2.part.1 = cheese
    menu.0.maincourse.2 =
    menu.0 =

    (Not beautiful, but it solved my case...)
    up
    0
    boan dot web at outlook dot com
    5 years ago
    SimpleXMLElement::children can return null in this case:

    <?php
    $xml     = '
    <root attr="Hello"/>
    '    ;

    $sxe = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);

    $sxe_xpath = $sxe->xpath('/root/@attr')[0];

    $children = $sxe_xpath->children();

    var_export($children); // Is null
    ?>
    up
    0
    coldshine1 at rambler dot ru
    13 years ago
    This is my recursive simple function to parse XML with attributes.

    <?php
    function ParseXML($node, &$parent=array(), $only_child=true) {        

                //Current node name
                $node_name = $node->getName();
             
                //Let's count children
                $only_child = true;
            if(    $node->count() > 1 ) $only_child = false;

                //If there is no child, then there may be text data
                if($only_child){
                    $content="$node";           
                if (    strlen($content)>0) $parent['content']=$content;
            }
           
                //Get attributes of current node
                foreach ($node->attributes() as $k=>$v) {
                    $parent['@attributes'][$k]="$v";
            }
          
                //Get children
                $count = 0;
            foreach (    $node->children() as $child_name=>$child_node) {
                if(!    $only_child) //If there are siblings then we'll add node to the end of the array
                        LGServerPVR::ParseXML($child_node, $parent[$node_name][$child_name][$count], $only_child);
                else
                        LGServerPVR::ParseXML($child_node, $parent[$node_name][$child_name], $only_child);
                    $count++;
            }
           
            return     $parent; 
                //(c) c01d[s]h!nE 10.12.2010      
            }

    ?>
    up
    0
    mrdaniellee at live dot com
    14 years ago
    use this If you want to view the HTML as well as data.

    normal dumps display the parsed versions of HTML.
    This code displays the HTML as Text in a Text Area, and also display all other a data along side as an array

    perfect for debugging (xml with html).

    Try This Code:

    <?php
    $xml      = simplexml_load_file($url);

    function     xml2array_parse($xml){
         foreach (    $xml->children() as $parent => $child){
                 $return["$parent"] = xml2array_parse($child)?xml2array_parse($child):"$child";
         }
         return     $return;
    }

    print     "<pre><textarea style=\"width:200%;height:100%;\">";
    print_r(xml2array_parse($xml));
    print     "</textarea></pre>";
    ?>
    up
    0
    Anonymous
    16 years ago
    for XML namespaces such as <dc:creator> in RSS feeds use

    <?php
        $xml     = new SimpleXMLElement($string);
            $item = $xml->channel[0]->item[0];
            $dc = $item->children("http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/");
        echo     $dc->creator;
    ?>
    up
    -1
    Anonymous
    14 years ago
    Here's my xml-to-array routine. Unlike many of the other comments here, this one takes namespaces into account.

    <?php

    class XmlArray {

      public function     load_dom ($xml) {
            $node=simplexml_import_dom($xml);
        return     $this->add_node($node);
      }
     
      public function     load_string ($s) {
            $node=simplexml_load_string($s);
        return     $this->add_node($node);
      }
     
      private function     add_node ($node, &$parent=null, $namespace='', $recursive=false) {

            $namespaces = $node->getNameSpaces(true);
            $content="$node";
       
            $r['name']=$node->getName();
        if (!    $recursive) {
              $tmp=array_keys($node->getNameSpaces(false));
              $r['namespace']=$tmp[0];
              $r['namespaces']=$namespaces;
        }
        if (    $namespace) $r['namespace']=$namespace;
        if (    $content) $r['content']=$content;
       
        foreach (    $namespaces as $pre=>$ns) {
          foreach (    $node->children($ns) as $k=>$v) {
                $this->add_node($v, $r['children'], $pre, true);
          }
          foreach (    $node->attributes($ns) as $k=>$v) {
                $r['attributes'][$k]="$pre:$v";
          }
        }
        foreach (    $node->children() as $k=>$v) {
              $this->add_node($v, $r['children'], '', true);
        }
        foreach (    $node->attributes() as $k=>$v) {
              $r['attributes'][$k]="$v";
        }
       
            $parent[]=&$r;
        return     $parent[0];
       
      }

    }

    ?>
    up
    -1
    thetazzbot at gmail dot com
    13 years ago
    Ok so say you have this xml:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
    <!DOCTYPE nitf
    PUBLIC "-//IPTC-NAA//DTD NITF 3.1//EN"
           "http://www.nitf.org/site/nitf-documentation/nitf-3-1.dtd">
    <nitf>
      <head>
        <docdata management-status="embargoed">
          <!--data/2011/08/23/parties/doc4e53aa5783cca930694817.txt-->
          <doc-id id-string="doc4e53aa5783cca930694817"/>
          <date.release norm="20110823T000000"/>
          <key-list/>
        </docdata>
        <pubdata type="web" position.section="parties" position.sequence="0"/>
      </head>

    -- snip --

    If you need to access the nodes named "like.this" such as the date.release above, here is how I did it:

    $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xhtml);
    echo (string)$xml->head->docdata->{"date.release"}["norm"];

    Took me a while to figure that one out ;)
    up
    -1
    taylorbarstow at that google mail thingy
    18 years ago
    Sometimes you actually want an array, not a pseudo array.   This is especially true when you aren't dealing with attributes (i.e., you just want the array of child nodes).

    Do like this:

    <?php
    $children     = $sxml->xpath('child::node()');
    ?>

    The reason you might want this is to be able to use array functions like array_shift, array_pop, etc.  This is especially true when you are writing recursive functions.  Simplexml works really well in iterative programming, but if you try to implement recursion it gets ugly.
    up
    -1
    Andrew Rose (rose dot andrew at gmail dot com)
    19 years ago
    The example below shows the basic use of depth-first recursion to span the xml tree.

    This is coded for the command line, and it prints out the original sentance above and then the copy cat sentence it creates itself for comparison, which as you will see; this example is slightly off from, I'll leave it upto you to resolve this issue.

    All in all I personaly think xml and recursion go hand in hand, so if you don't understand recursion but know xml and want to use php to manipulate xml you will need to learn about recursion at some point.

    <?php
    $xml     = simplexml_load_string(
    '<person>
    <child role="son">
      <child role="daughter"/>
    </child>
    <child role="daughter">
      <child role="son">
       <child role="son"/>
      </child>
    </child>
    </person>'    );

    function     recurse($child)
    {
       foreach(    $child->children() as $children) {
         echo     ' who begot a '.$children['role'];
             recurse($children);
       }
        return;
    }

    foreach(    $xml->children() as $children) {
    echo     'The person begot a '.$children['role'];
          recurse($children, 0);
    echo     '; ';
    }

    echo     "\n";
    echo     'The person begot a son who begot a daughter; The person begot a daughter who begot a son; and that son begot a son'."\n";

    ?>
    up
    -2
    zyxwvu at users dot sourceforge dot net
    20 years ago
    File:

    <category>
      <item>text</item>
      <bold>text</bold>
      <item>text</item>
      <item>text</item>
      <mark>text</mark>
      <bold>text</bold>
    </category>

    If you want to get also names of the tags, you can use this loop layout:

    <?php
    foreach($category -> children() as $name => $node){
      echo     $name.'<br/>';
    }
    ?>
    up
    -2
    rodmen at gmail dot com
    15 years ago
    Transform xml to array php

    <?php
    function xml2phpArray($xml,$arr){
            $iter = 0;
            foreach(    $xml->children() as $b){
                        $a = $b->getName();
                    if(!    $b->children()){
                                $arr[$a] = trim($b[0]);
                    }
                    else{
                                $arr[$a][$iter] = array();
                                $arr[$a][$iter] = xml2phpArray($b,$arr[$a][$iter]);
                    }
                $iter++;
            }
            return     $arr;
    }

    $Array = simplexml_load_string(file_get_contents('myfile.xml'));
    print_r(xml2phpArray($Array,array()));
    ?>
    up
    -2
    no-one
    19 years ago
    For anyone who hasn't read Sterling Hughe's article (http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-simplexml.php):

    <?php
    $xml_document     =<<<EOT
    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <root xmlns:foo="http://example.com">
      <foo:bar>baz</foo:bar>
    </root>
    EOT;

    $xml_document = simplexml_load_xml($xml_document);

    $foo_ns_bar = $xml_document->children('http://example.com');

    echo     $foo_ns_bar->bar[0]; // prints 'baz'
    ?>
    up
    -4
    crescentfreshpot at yahoo dot com
    16 years ago
    Just a warning that the iterable returned from children() contains the '@attributes' key, which is "invisible" during a foreach but can be seen if using a different construct, such as list()=each() or casting to an array before iterating w/ foreach.
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