PHP SimpleXML - Get all Child Attributes if Parent Attribute Equals Variable Value

Question

I have an XML file I need to parse that looks similar to the below:

<directory name="Addbriefs">
<file name="File1.pdf"/>
<file name="File2.pdf"/>
<file name="File3.pdf"/>
<file name="File4.pdf"/>
</directory>

<directory name="Addusefulinfo">
<file name="FileA.pdf"/>
<file name="FileB.pdf"/>
<file name="FileC.pdf"/>
<file name="FileD.pdf"/>
</directory>

<directory name="Newbriefs">
<file name="FileZ.pdf"/>
<file name="FileY.pdf"/>
<file name="FileX.pdf"/>
<file name="FileW.pdf"/>
</directory>

I'm using PHP and want to be able to return a string which contains all of the name attributes for all file elements, but only if the name attribute of the parent element (directory) matches a variable that I define elsewhere.

i.e. if $var = "Newbriefs", I want to return the below string...

FileZ.pdf FileY.pdf FileX.pdf FileW.pdf

I successfully use simplexml elsewhere in my PHP code on the same website, but so far only to return a string of all attributes of a specific element type, not based on what the parent element attribute is. I've checked and I'm not sure simplexml has the capabilities to achieve this? Thanks

iainn · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-10 16:28:45Z

1

You can do this fairly simply with SimpleXML's xpath method:

$var = "Newbriefs";
$files = $sxml->xpath("directory[@name='$var']/file/@name");

This query filters the <directory> tags to those with name="Newbriefs", and then return the name attribute from all child <file> elements.

You can treat each element in the $files array as you would a normal SimpleXMLElement object - just cast it to string to get the contents:

$filename = (string) $files[0]; // FileZ.pdf

See https://eval.in/877375

answered Oct 10, 2017 at 16:28

iainn

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1 Comment

ladders81 Over a year ago

Brilliant, just tested this and managed to get it working straight away. Thanks very much for your prompt assistance, it's very much appreciated!

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