Getting XML attributes in PHP

Question

Looked at a few other SO posts on this but no joy.

I've got this code:

$url = "http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/toppaidapplications/limit=10/genre=6014/xml";
$string = file_get_contents($url);
$string = preg_replace("/(<\/?)(\w+):([^>]*>)/", "$1$2$3", $string);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);

foreach ($xml->entry as $val) {
    echo "RESULTS: " . $val->attributes() . "\n";

but I can't get any results. I'm specifically interested in getting the ID value which would be 549592189 in this fragment:

<id im:id="549592189" im:bundleId="com.activision.wipeout">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wipeout/id549592189?mt=8&amp;uo=2</id>

Any suggestions?

Don't manipulate html/xml with regexes. you're just begging for trouble. — Marc B
– Marc B, Commented Sep 7, 2012 at 21:52
You should read Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way. It's pertaining to html, but xml applies as well. — ShadowScripter
– ShadowScripter, Commented Sep 7, 2012 at 21:55
Re regex, perhaps this has been solved but see: php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.construct.php#94709 — Snowcrash
– Snowcrash, Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 8:50
@SnowCrash: Don't always trust the comments on PHP.net, they are posted by users, and may not be correct. In this case, that comment is wrong. SimpleXML works fine with XML namespaces, you just need to know how to use them. See: sitepoint.com/simplexml-and-namespaces and stackoverflow.com/q/10322464/206403 — gen_Eric
– gen_Eric, Commented Sep 10, 2012 at 14:52

gen_Eric · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-07 22:11:57Z

0

SimpleXML gives you can easy way to drill down in the XML structure and get the element(s) you want. No need for the regex, whatever it does.

<?php

// Load XML
$url = "http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/toppaidapplications/limit=10/genre=6014/xml";
$string = file_get_contents($url);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($string);

// Get the entries
$entries = $xml->entry;

foreach($entries as $e){
    // Get each entriy's id
    $id = $e->id;
    // Get the attributes
    // ID is in the "im" namespace
    $attr = $id->attributes('im', TRUE);
    // echo id
    echo $attr['id'].'<br/>';
}

DEMO: http://codepad.viper-7.com/qNo7gs

answered Sep 7, 2012 at 22:11

gen_Eric

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Igor Parra · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-07 22:05:14Z

0

Try with xpath:

$doc     = new DOMDocument;
@$doc->loadHTML($string);
$xpath   = new DOMXpath($doc);
$r       = $xpath->query("//id/@im:id");
$id      = $r->item(0)->value;

answered Sep 7, 2012 at 22:05

Igor Parra

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1 Comment

Igor Parra Over a year ago

@snow-crash Error Control Operator "When prepended to an expression in PHP, any error messages that might be generated by that expression will be ignored." In this case helps to ignore PHP warnings when works over malformed downloaded documents.

user1725719 · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-04 19:43:58Z

0

Try:

$sxml = new SimpleXMLElement($url);
for($i = 0;$i <=10;$i++){
$appid= $sxml->entry[$i]->id->attributes("im",TRUE);
echo $appid;
}

answered Sep 4, 2013 at 19:43

user1725719

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