As you know, I integrate with a large number of Payment Providers. For some reason, they've been left in 1995 and feel that XML is the best thing since sliced bread. Converting XML to an array isn't easy. But if you convert it, then it's a lot easier to use.
As you an I both know, this isn't the best way of doing things. After years of playing around with the DOMDocument, I created this class to convert an XML string to a well formatted PHP Array.
So here's my class to convert XML to an array in PHP.
PHP Code:
<?php
class App_Convert_XmlToArray {
const NAME_ATTRIBUTES = '@attributes';
const NAME_CONTENT = '@content';
const NAME_ROOT = '@root';
/**
* Convert a given XML String to Array
*
* @param string $xmlString
* @return array|boolean false for failure
*/
public static function XmlToArray($xmlString) {
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$load = $doc->loadXML($xmlString);
if ($load == false) {
return false;
}
$root = $doc->documentElement;
$output = self::DOMDocumentToArray($root);
$output[self::NAME_ROOT] = $root->tagName;
return $output;
}
/**
* Convert DOMDocument->documentElement to array
*
* @param DOMElement $documentElement
* @return array
*/
protected static function DOMDocumentToArray($documentElement) {
$return = array();
switch ($documentElement->nodeType) {
case XML_CDATA_SECTION_NODE:
$return = trim($documentElement->textContent);
break;
case XML_TEXT_NODE:
$return = trim($documentElement->textContent);
break;
case XML_ELEMENT_NODE:
for ($count=0, $childNodeLength=$documentElement->childNodes->length; $count<$childNodeLength; $count++) {
$child = $documentElement->childNodes->item($count);
$childValue = self::DOMDocumentToArray($child);
if(isset($child->tagName)) {
$tagName = $child->tagName;
if(!isset($return[$tagName])) {
$return[$tagName] = array();
}
$return[$tagName][] = $childValue;
}
elseif($childValue || $childValue === '0') {
$return = (string) $childValue;
}
}
if($documentElement->attributes->length && !is_array($return)) {
$return = array(self::NAME_CONTENT=>$return);
}
if(is_array($return))
{
if($documentElement->attributes->length)
{
$attributes = array();
foreach($documentElement->attributes as $attrName => $attrNode)
{
$attributes[$attrName] = (string) $attrNode->value;
}
$return[self::NAME_ATTRIBUTES] = $attributes;
}
foreach ($return as $key => $value)
{
if(is_array($value) && count($value)==1 && $key!=self::NAME_ATTRIBUTES)
{
$return[$key] = $value[0];
}
}
}
break;
}
return $return;
}
}
Using the class to convert XML to a PHP array is pretty straightforward. You can do it like this:
PHP Code:
<?php
// first, get your XML string ready.
$x = '<?xml version="1.0"?>
...
...';
$array = App_Convert_XmlToArray::XmlToArray($x);
var_dump($array);