XML to Array

[K. Wolfe]

Take the following:

<a>
<b />
<c>
  <c1>aha</c1>
    <c1-1>dsfg</c1-1>
    <c1-2>sdfg</c1-2>
  <c2>fsdg</c2>
</c>
</a>

I've been using SimpleXMLElement() to easily access the data in an array LIKE setup. The problem is it is still an object and I have to loop through an assign values to an array myself, and it become problematic for instances such as <c1>.

Any ideas on how I can can easily and simply convert this to an array, no matter the depth of the XLS tree?

[Lemon Juice]

There's a trick with encoding an object to json and then to array using the second parameter set to true in json_decode():

$xmlstr = "<a>
<b />
<c>
  <c1>aha</c1>
    <c1-1>dsfg</c1-1>
    <c1-2>sdfg</c1-2>
  <c2>fsdg</c2>
</c>
</a>";

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);
$xml_array = json_decode(json_encode($xml), true);
print_r($xml_array); 

[K. Wolfe]

Ah, beautiful! Thank you!

[K. Wolfe]

So it turns out the remote machine that will run this doesn't have JSON installed, and no possibility of it happening. Any other ideas?

[Lemon Juice]

How about a function like this:

function toArray($obj) {
    if(is_object($obj)) {
        $obj = (array) $obj;
    }
    
    if (is_array($obj)) {
        $new = array();
        foreach($obj as $key => $val) {
            $new[$key] = toArray($val);
        }
        
    } else { 
        $new = $obj;
    }
    
    return $new;
}


$xmlstr = "<a>
<b />
<c>
  <c1>aha</c1>
    <c1-1>dsfg</c1-1>
    <c1-2>sdfg</c1-2>
  <c2>fsdg</c2>
</c>
</a>";

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);
$xml_array = toArray($xml);
print_r($xml_array);