The SimpleXMLIterator provides recursive iteration over all nodes of a SimpleXMLElement object.
The documentation is a bit sparse for SimpleXmlIterator. Here is an example showing the use of its methods. xml2Array and sxiToArray work together to convert an XML document to an associative array structure.
The contents of cats.xml:
======================================
<cats>
<cat>
<name>Jack</name>
<age>2</age>
<color>grey</color>
<color>white</color>
</cat>
<cat>
<name>Maxwell</name>
<age>12</age>
<color>orange</color>
<color>black</color>
</cat>
</cats>
======================================
<?php
function xml2array($fname){
$sxi = new SimpleXmlIterator($fname, null, true);
return sxiToArray($sxi);
}
function sxiToArray($sxi){
$a = array();
for( $sxi->rewind(); $sxi->valid(); $sxi->next() ) {
if(!array_key_exists($sxi->key(), $a)){
$a[$sxi->key()] = array();
}
if($sxi->hasChildren()){
$a[$sxi->key()][] = sxiToArray($sxi->current());
}
else{
$a[$sxi->key()][] = strval($sxi->current());
}
}
return $a;
}
// Read cats.xml and print the results:
$catArray = xml2array('cats.xml');
print_r($catArray);
?>
Results (reformatted a bit for compactness and clarity):
======================================
Array(
[cat] => Array(
[0] => Array(
[name] => Array( [0] => Jack )
[age] => Array( [0] => 2 )
[color] => Array( [0] => grey,
[1] => white )
)
[1] => Array(
[name] => Array( [0] => Maxwell )
[age] => Array( [0] => 12 )
[color] => Array( [0] => orange
[1] => black )
)
)
)
Unlike the DirectoryIterator, for one, you'll need to call $it->rewind() before using the iterator in a for() or while() loop. Calling foreach() does rewind the iterator before iteration.