How Can I Convert a PHP Array to a SimpleXML Object?

Converting Arrays to SimpleXML Objects in PHP

Introduction

SimpleXML is a PHP extension that provides a simple and intuitive way to parse and create XML documents. It represents XML data as an object, making it easy to access and manipulate. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to convert an existing array into a SimpleXML object.

Array to SimpleXML Conversion

To convert an array to a SimpleXML object, we can use a custom function that recursively iterates through the array and adds elements and attributes to the SimpleXML object accordingly. This function can be implemented as follows:

function array_to_xml($data, &$xml_data) {
    foreach($data as $key => $value) {
        if(is_array($value)) {
            if(is_numeric($key)) {
                $key = 'item'.$key; // Dealing with numeric keys
            }
            $subnode = $xml_data->addChild($key);
            array_to_xml($value, $subnode);
        } else {
            $xml_data->addChild("$key",htmlspecialchars("$value"));
        }
     }
}

Example

Consider the following array:

$data = array('total_stud' => 500,
               0 => array('student' => array('id' => 1, 'name' => 'abc', 'address' => array('city' => 'Pune', 'zip' => '411006'))),
               1 => array('student' => array('id' => 2, 'name' => 'xyz', 'address' => array('city' => 'Mumbai', 'zip' => '400906'))));

To convert this array to a SimpleXML object, we create an instance of SimpleXMLElement and pass it to the array_to_xml function:

$xml_data = new SimpleXMLElement('<?xml version="1.0"?><data></data>');
array_to_xml($data, $xml_data);

This will generate the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<data>
    <total_stud>500</total_stud>
    <student>
        <id>1</id>
        <name>abc</name>
        <address>
            <city>Pune</city>
            <zip>411006</zip>
        </address>
    </student>
    <student>
        <id>1</id>
        <name>abc</name>
        <address>
            <city>Mumbai</city>
            <zip>400906</zip>
        </address>
    </student>
</data>

Final Notes

The array_to_xml function can handle arrays of any depth and complexity. It is a versatile tool that can be used to convert arrays into XML documents for various purposes, such as data export or serialization. The SimpleXML extension provides several additional methods for manipulating and saving XML data, making it a valuable tool for XML processing in PHP.

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