I want to create an array from the id attributes of the element <b>, however the below code returns all XML.
PHP file:
$xmlfile=simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
$test=$xmlfile->xpath("/a//b[@id]");
XML file(fixed):
<a>
<b id="1"></b>
<b id="2"></b>
<b id="3"></b>
<b id="4"></b>
<b id="5"></b>
</a>
Hello_ mate
If I understood you right this code snippet will do the job:
SOLUTION 1
$xmlfile = simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
$items = $xmlfile->xpath("/a//b[@id]");
$result = array();
foreach ($items as $item) {
$result[] = $item['id']->__toString();
}
echo '<pre>' . print_r($result, true) . '</pre>';
exit;
// Output
Array
(
[0] => 1
[1] => 2
[2] => 3
[3] => 4
[4] => 5
)
SOLUTION 2
$sampleHtml = file_get_contents("test.xml");
$result = array();
$dom = new \DOMDocument();
if ($dom->loadHTML($sampleHtml)) {
$bElements = $dom->getElementsByTagName('b');
foreach ($bElements as $b) {
$result[] = $b->getAttribute('id');
}
} else {
echo 'Error';
}
echo '<pre>' . print_r($result, true) . '</pre>';
exit;
// Output
Array
(
[0] => 1
[1] => 2
[2] => 3
[3] => 4
[4] => 5
)
If you want to extract just id attribute values from <b> tags, try below XPath:
/a/b/@id
as /a//b[@id] means extracting all b elements that have id attribute and that are descendants of a
I feel like both existing answers tell you half of what you need to know.
Firstly, your XPath is subtly wrong: b[@id] means "any b element which has an attribute id". You want instead b/@id, meaning "any id attribute which is a child of a b element".
Secondly, the SimpleXML xpath method returns an array of SimpleXMLElement objects representing the elements or attributes matched. To get just the text contents of those attributes, you need to cast each one to string, using (string)$foo.
So:
$xmlfile = simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
$test = $xmlfile->xpath("/a//b/@id");
$list = [];
foreach ( $test as $attr ) {
$list[] = (string)$attr;
}
