PHP SimpleXML read comment with xPath

Question

I'm loading a XML Feed, which works. But it seems that I am missing something in my xpath query. Actually I want to read the comment of the title node but it doesn't seem to work.

$xml = simplexml_load_file( $feed_url );
$comment = $xml->xpath('//channel/item[1]/title//comment()');

The feed has the following structure

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
<channel>
    <title>My main feed</title>
    <description>feed description</description>
    <link>http://www.example.com</link>
    <language>en_US</language>
    <lastBuildDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2014 11:44:13 UTC</lastBuildDate>

    <item>
        <title><!-- Special Image  --></title>
        <link></link>
        <guid>http://www.example.com/page/345</guid>
        <media:category>horizontal</media:category>
        <media:thumbnails>
            <media:thumbnail url="www.example.com/test.jpg" type="image/jpeg" height="324" width="545" />
        </media:thumbnails>
    </item>
    <item>
        <title>Here's a normal title</title>
        <description><![CDATA[Description Text]]></description>
        <link></link>
        <guid>http://www.example.com/page/123</guid>
        <media:category>horizontal</media:category>
    </item>
</channel>
</rss>

Does anyone have a clue how I could read the comment?

where is the said xml feed example? so that we could see what you're trying to reach — Kevin
– Kevin, Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 11:15

Kevin · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-26 12:07:50Z

2

Alternatively, you could use DOMDocument to access those comments. Example:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->load($feed_url);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
$comment = $xpath->evaluate('string(//channel/item[1]/title/comment())');
echo $comment;

answered Nov 26, 2014 at 12:07

Kevin

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2 Comments

pbaldauf Over a year ago

Previously I did it with DOMDocument. But is there no change to do it with simplexml_load_file?

Kevin Over a year ago

@pbaldauf i don't think simplexml can handle comments, when you try to access it, it will return the parent node instead

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