Getting the content of node based on a set of attributes

PHP
1

Hello there,

I’m working of an web service API that gives me an XML like below. I’m wondering if there is an easy way to access the content of each <DATA> nodes based on the attributes. Most of the time I only need to access one of the nodes like <DATA type=“extra” id=“uid”>ab468d02ef</DATA>.

<SET>
<TYPE>Data type name</TYPE>
<RECORD>
<DATA type=“attribute” id=“1”>Boris</DATA>
<DATA type=“attribute” id=“2”>Johnson</DATA>
<DATA type=“attribute” id=“3”>Mr.</DATA>
<DATA type=“extra” id=“state”>published</DATA>
<DATA type=“extra” id=“date”>2012-01-23</DATA>
<DATA type=“extra” id=“uid”>ab468d02ef</DATA>
</RECORD>
</SET>

So far I looped through it with a script like below but I feel it’s bulky and not very efficient. Is there any good way to get the content of just one node?

foreach ($xml->RECORD as $record) {
  foreach($record->DATA[0]->attributes() as $name => $value)
  {
    if ($name == "id")
    {
      $UID= $value;

    }
  }
}
2

Start investigating into xPath?

3