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SimpleXML and namespaces

There’s a lot about SimpleXML, PHP5’s new API for accessing the contents of XML documents, in SitePoint’s recently-published book No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP, but one thing it doesn’t cover is how to use SimpleXML with a document that makes use of XML Namespaces.

Take this document, for example–a simplified RSS 1.0 feed:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
  <channel rdf:about="http://www.sitepoint.com/">
    <title>SitePoint.com</title>
    <link>http://www.sitepoint.com/</link>
    <description>SitePoint is the natural place to go to grow your online business.</description>
    <items>
      <rdf:Seq>
        <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.sitepoint.com/article/take-command-ajax" />
      </rdf:Seq>
    </items>
  </channel>
  <item rdf:about="http://www.sitepoint.com/article/take-command-ajax">
    <title>Take Command with AJAX</title>
    <link>http://www.sitepoint.com/article/take-command-ajax</link>
    <description>Want to get a bang out of your AJAX artillery?</description>
    <dc:date>2005-10-14T04:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </item>
</rdf:RDF>

In PHP5, here’s how you might think to use SimpleXML’s API to get at the date of every item in the feed:


$feed = simplexml_load_file('http://www.sitepoint.com/recent.rdf');
foreach ($feed->item as $item) {
  echo $item->date;
}

But this won’t work, because the date element has a namespace prefix (<dc:date>), so it can’t be accessed by the usual means.

Here’s the solution. First, check what the URI is for the namespace. In this case, the dc: prefix maps to the URI http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

Then use the children method of the SimpleXML object, passing it that URI:


$feed = simplexml_load_file('http://www.sitepoint.com/recent.rdf');
foreach ($feed->item as $item) {
  $ns_dc = $item->children('http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/');
  echo $ns_dc->date;
}

When you pass the namespace URI to the children method, you get a SimpleXML collection of the child elements belonging to that namespace. You can work with that collection the same way you would with any SimpleXML collection.

You can use the attributes method in the same way to obtain attributes with namespace prefixes.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 4:13 am, contains 398 words, 6 images, and is filed under PHP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. The views and opinions in this blog post are those of its author.

This post has 18 responses so far

Could we please have an example for the attributes please? I have failed to use the attributes method to get at a name spaced attribute contained in a name spaced element (and caused my scalp to bleed in the process!!!). In the end I regex’ed out the attribute to its own element so I could get SimpleXML to work; not so simple!
Ian
October 20th, 2005 at 8:37 pm

Hmm okay. To get at the rdf:resource attribute in the rdf:li tag in the example above:


$feed = simplexml_load_file('http://www.sitepoint.com/recent.rdf');
$items = $feed->channel->items;
$items_rdf = $items->children('http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#');
$Seq_rdf = $items_rdf->Seq->children('http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#');
$lis = $Seq_rdf->li;
foreach ($lis as $li) { 
  $li_attr_rdf = $li->attributes('http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#');
  $resource = $li_attr_rdf['resource'];
  echo $resource . "\n";
}

Kevin Yank

October 20th, 2005 at 9:34 pm

Thanks for the pointers Kevin!
Ian
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:03 am
[...] This article reveals the ‘special’ steps one has to take to read XML in PHP 5 containing namespaces—more psychological support with a bit more technical help. Another article, “XML Namespaces” does more of the same. [...]
the rasx() context » Blog Archive » KB Research Links
January 13th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
What about a line that has both a namespace and an attribute such as the following:

[broken code sample removed -Ed]

How would I grab the itunes:image reference in the preceding xml?
I’ve tried the following code snippet to no avail(and many others):

foreach($rss->channel as $channel)
{
$channel_itunes = $channel->children(’http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd’);
$image = $channel_itunes->image['url'];
}

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
joeblow
June 20th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
joeblow,

Could you post your code sample again and escape your special characters (e.g. <)?
Kevin Yank
June 21st, 2006 at 9:06 am
<channel>
<itunes:image href=”some.link.com” type=”video”>
<

I actually figured out the solution using your documentation and some experimentation.

foreach($rss->channel as $channel)
{
$channel_itunes = $channel->children(’http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd’);
$image_items = $channel_itunes->attributes();
$image = $image_items['href'];
}
joeblow
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:07 am
Is there any way to see what is contained in the buffer for $channel_itunes in the above example. I have tried the Zend debugger but is just states “Object of: SimpleXMLElement” and print_r gives me an empty SimpleXMLElement Object. If I could see the data that was contained in the buffer, I would be able to more accurately troubleshoot problems I was having without guessing as I am now.

Thanks.
joeblow
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:23 am
Is there any way to (automatically) get the xmlns:dc URL from the code? I’d like to find the URI in code, but all examples have it hard-coded.

March 29th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Anonymous,

Sure — just use the getNamespaces method: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.simplexml-element-getNamespaces.php
Kevin Yank
March 29th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Kevin,
Thank you for this article. I bought the book previously and this missing topic is just what I’m stuck on. If you could indulge my ignorance, I am still stuck on how to parse multiple namespace items with multiple attributes on the same level. I am trying to parse the yahoo weather rss feed:

<channel>
…
<yweather:location city="Tombstone" region="Arizona" country="US"><yweather:location>
…
<yweather:astronomy sunrise="7:02am" sunset="4:51pm"><yweather:astronomy>
…
<channel>

how do I get to sunrise for instance? $sunrise = ?
Thanks!
greg bass
April 11th, 2007 at 3:53 am
SimpleXML and namespaces are sooo gay. This should be handled the same as non-namespaced attributes.

November 1st, 2007 at 6:23 am
is there a way to escape “” in xml file only. I want those characters to be recognized in html though.
whatever
December 4th, 2007 at 5:31 am
That’s definitely dugg. Thank you!
Crashdaddy
January 14th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Great article. I have been trying to get a value from a node with a namespace for quite some time now and couldn’t quite figure it out.

Thanks.
Tim
September 1st, 2008 at 2:48 am
Kevin, great article! This helped a lot. Question for you: how would I handle multiple namespace prefixes, such as the following:

If I wanted to get the values of attribute one and two of the widget, how would that be done?

Thanks,

– MT
mtorbin
December 24th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Kevin, great article! This helped a lot. Question for you: how would I handle multiple namespace prefixes, such as the following:

[item:group]
[widget:typeA attr1="" attr2=""/]
[/item:group]

If I wanted to get the values of attribute one and two of the widget, how would that be done?

Thanks,

– MT
mtorbin
December 24th, 2008 at 1:02 am
That’s brilliant, thanks a lot!
Adrian Smith
February 10th, 2009 at 2:23 am

Your Blogmaster is...

Kevin Yank

Kevin began developing for the Web in 1995 and is a highly respected technical author. He wrote Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP and MySQL, a practical step-by-step guide published by SitePoint, and he's co-author of the SitePoint Tech Times, a bi-weekly newsletter for technically-minded web developers. Kev believes that any good webmaster should have seen at least one episode of MacGyver.

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