PHP Tutorial - PHP simplexml_load_file() Function

The simplexml_load_file() function converts the specified XML file into a SimpleXMLElement object.

Syntax

PHP simplexml_load_file() Function has the following syntax.

simplexml_load_file(file,classname,options,ns,is_prefix);

Parameter

Parameter	Is Required	Description
file	Required.	Path to the XML file
classname	Optional.	Class of the new object
options	Optional.	Additional Libxml parameters. Is set by specifying the option and 1 or 0 (TRUE or FALSE, e.g. LIBXML_NOBLANKS(1))
ns	Optional.	A namespace prefix or URI
is_prefix	Optional.	A Boolean value. TRUE if ns is a prefix. FALSE if ns is a URI. Default is FALSE

Possible values:

LIBXML_COMPACT - Activate nodes allocation optimization (may speed up application)
LIBXML_DTDATTR - Set default DTD attributes
LIBXML_DTDLOAD - Load external subset
LIBXML_DTDVALID - Validate with the DTD
LIBXML_NOBLANKS - Remove blank nodes
LIBXML_NOCDATA - Merge CDATA as text nodes
LIBXML_NOEMPTYTAG - Expand empty tags (e.g. <br/> to <br></br>), only available in the DOMDocument->save() and DOMDocument->saveXML() functions
LIBXML_NOENT - Substitute entities
LIBXML_NOERROR - Do not show error reports
LIBXML_NONET - Disable network access while loading documents
LIBXML_NOWARNING - Do not show warning reports
LIBXML_NOXMLDECL - Drop the XML declaration when saving a document
LIBXML_NSCLEAN - Remove redundant namespace declarations
LIBXML_PARSEHUGE - Sets XML_PARSE_HUGE flag, which relaxes any hardcoded limit from the parser. This affects limits like maximum depth of a document and limits of the size of text nodes
LIBXML_XINCLUDE - Implement XInclude substitution
LIBXML_ERR_ERROR - Get recoverable errors
LIBXML_ERR_FATAL - Get fatal errors
LIBXML_ERR_NONE - Get no errors
LIBXML_ERR_WARNING - Get simple warnings
LIBXML_VERSION - Get libxml version
LIBXML_DOTTED_VERSION - Get dotted libxml version

Return

Returns a SimpleXMLElement object on success. FALSE on failure.

Example

Convert an XML file into a SimpleXMLElement object, then output keys and elements of the object.

Assume we have the following XML file, "note.xml":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<book>
    <name>PHP</name>
    <name>Java</name>
</book>

PHP code


<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
print_r($xml);
?>

Example 2

Output the data from each element in the XML file:


<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
echo $xml->to . "\n";
echo $xml->from . "\n";
echo $xml->heading . "\n";
echo $xml->body;
?>

Example 3

Output the element's name and data for each child node in the XML file:


<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("test.xml");
echo $xml->getName() . "\n";

foreach($xml->children() as $child){
   echo $child->getName() . ": " . $child . "\n";
}
?>

Example 4

The following code shows how to get attribute and element as array.


<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file('test.xml');
echo $xml->book[3]->title . ' (ISBN: ' . $xml->book[3]['isbn13'] . ')';
?>

The following code is for test.xml.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<inventory>
  <book isbn13='1'>
    <title>PHP</title>
  <author>Jack</author>
  <publisher>Publisher 1</publisher>
  <description>PHP Book</description>
  </book>
  <book isbn13='2'>
    <title>XML</title>
  <author>Jane</author>
  <publisher>Publisher 2</publisher>
  <description>XML Book</description>
  </book>
</inventory>

The code above generates the following result.

Example 5

The following code shows how to check if an element is an array.


/* ww  w  . j a  va 2 s.c om*/
<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file('test.xml');
?>
<html>
<head>
</head>

<body>
<?php
foreach ($xml->book as $book) {
  echo '<h2>' . $book->title . '</h2>';
  
  echo '<p class="author">';
  if (is_array($book->author)) {
    echo implode(', ', $book->author);
  } else {
    echo $book->author;
  }  
  echo '</p>';
                
  echo '<p class="publisher">' . $book->publisher . '</p>';
  echo '<p class="publisher">ISBN: ' . $book['isbn13'] . '</p>';
                  
  echo '<p>' . $book->description . '</p>';
}
?>
</body>
</html>

The following code is for test.xml.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<inventory>
  <book isbn13='1'>
    <title>PHP</title>
  <author>Jack</author>
  <publisher>Publisher 1</publisher>
  <description>PHP Book</description>
  </book>
  <book isbn13='2'>
    <title>XML</title>
  <author>Jane</author>
  <publisher>Publisher 2</publisher>
  <description>XML Book</description>
  </book>
</inventory>

The code above generates the following result.