Save XML as serialized PHP array into database

Question

I'd like to serialize a XML array with a custom function, but somehow all approaches I tried were not successful

So far I played around with string manipulations and json_encode without success. Since there are numerical elements, I added a "Number_" to the XML as you see in . Now for creating the array I first remove those by str_replace and then load the XML, encode, decode and return.

This is the XML i try to save:

<my_cost>
 <Number_1>
  <min_days>1</min_days>
  <max_days>3</max_days>
  <range_cost>94</range_cost>
  <cost_applicable>fixed</cost_applicable>
 </Number_1>
 <Number_2>
  <min_days>4</min_days>
  <max_days>6</max_days>
  <range_cost>76</range_cost>
  <cost_applicable>fixed</cost_applicable>
 </Number_2>
</my_cost>

this is the code so far:

$data = str_replace("Number_", "", $data);  
$xml  = simplexml_load_string($data);
$json = json_encode($xml);
$jsond = json_decode($json, true);
return $jsond;

The expected PHP array should look as follows:

a:2:{
i:0;a:4{s:8:"min_days";s:1:"1";s:8:"max_days";s:1:"3";s:10:"range_cost";s:2:"94";s:15:"cost_applicable";s:5:"fixed";}
i:1;a:4:{s:8:"min_days";s:1:"4";s:8:"max_days";s:1:"6";s:10:"range_cost";s:2:"76";s:15:"cost_applicable";s:5:"fixed";}}

Actual result is empty

Removing the Number_ means the XML elements have numeric names which are invalid (stackoverflow.com/questions/19677315/…) — Nigel Ren
– Nigel Ren, Commented Jul 25, 2019 at 12:25
That's a serialized array with serialize(), not a json array with json_encode() — aynber
– aynber, Commented Jul 25, 2019 at 12:36
Every time you store serialised data into a database, Codd kills a puppy! — CD001
– CD001, Commented Jul 25, 2019 at 12:42

Nigel Ren · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-25 12:32:37Z

I'm not a fan of using json_encode() and json_decode() to do this, but it seems a quick enough fudge for what you are after.

As mentioned in the comment, you can't just remove the Number_ off the front of the tag names as numeric tag names in XML are not valid. A quick way round this though is to just convert the data and the use array_values() to remove the key names...

$xml  = simplexml_load_string($data);
$jsond = array_values(json_decode(json_encode($xml), true));
print_r($jsond);

gives...

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [min_days] => 1
            [max_days] => 3
            [range_cost] => 94
            [cost_applicable] => fixed
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [min_days] => 4
            [max_days] => 6
            [range_cost] => 76
            [cost_applicable] => fixed
        )

)

or the output of

print_r(serialize($jsond));

is

a:2:
{i:0;a:4:{s:8:"min_days";s:1:"1";s:8:"max_days";s:1:"3";s:10:"range_cost";s:2:"94";s:15:"cost_applicable";s:5:"fixed";}
i:1;a:4:{s:8:"min_days";s:1:"4";s:8:"max_days";s:1:"6";s:10:"range_cost";s:2:"76";s:15:"cost_applicable";s:5:"fixed";}}

Mukti Rani Ghosh · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-25 13:14:06Z

2

    Try this:
    $content = simplexml_load_string($xml); // Parse XML
    $array = json_decode(json_encode($content), true); // Convert to array
    $values = array_values($array); // Return all the values of an array
    $data = serialize($values); // Make serialize
    print_r($data) // Show the output;

    Hope you will get your expected result

answered Jul 25, 2019 at 13:14

Mukti Rani Ghosh

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