PHP simplexml_load_file() Function

The PHP simplexml_load_file() function converts the well-formed XML document in the given file to an object.

Syntax

simplexml_load_file(filename, class_name, options, 
                    namespace_or_prefix, is_prefix)

Parameters

`filename`	`Required.` Specify path to the XML file.
`class_name`	`Optional.` Specify the class of the new object. That class should extend the SimpleXMLElement class.
`options`	`Optional.` Use this parameter to specify additional Libxml parameters, which affect reading of XML documents.
`namespace_or_prefix`	`Optional.` Specify Namespace prefix or URI.
`is_prefix`	`Optional.` true if namespace_or_prefix is a prefix, false if it is a URI. Default is false.

Return Value

Returns an object of SimpleXMLElement class with properties containing the data held within the XML document, or false on failure.

Note: This function may return Boolean false, but may also return a non-Boolean value which evaluates to false. Therefore, use === operator for testing the return value of this function.

Exceptions

Produces an E_WARNING error message for each error found in the XML data.

Note: Use libxml_use_internal_errors() to suppress all XML errors, and libxml_get_errors() to iterate over them afterwards.

Example:

Lets assume that we have a file called test.xml. This file contains following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<userlist>
  <user>
    <username>John123</username>
    <name>John Smith</name>
    <phone>+1-8054098000</phone>
    <address>Brooklyn, New York, USA</address>
  </user>
</userlist>

In the example below, the simplexml_load_file() function is used to convert the given XML document to a SimpleXMLElement object.

<?php
if (file_exists('test.xml')) {
  $xml = simplexml_load_file('test.xml');
 
  print_r($xml);
} else {
  exit('Failed to open test.xml.');
}
?>

The output of the above code will be:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [user] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [username] => John123
            [name] => John Smith
            [phone] => +1-8054098000
            [address] => Brooklyn, New York, USA
        )
)

❮ PHP SimpleXML Reference