PHP simplexml_load_string() Function

The PHP simplexml_load_string() function converts the well-formed XML string to an object.

Syntax

simplexml_load_string(data, class_name, options, 
                      namespace_or_prefix, is_prefix)

Parameters

`data`	`Required.` Specify a well-formed XML string.
`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.
`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 string, 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: interpreting an XML string

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

<?php
$xmlstr = <<<XML
<userlist> 
  <user id="John123">
    <name>John Smith</name>
    <city>New York</city>
    <phone>+1-8054098000</phone>
  </user>
  
  <user id="Marry2015">
    <name>Marry G.</name>
    <city>London</city>
    <phone>+33-147996101</phone>
  </user> 
</userlist> 
XML;

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlstr);
 
print_r($xml);
?>

The output of the above code will be:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [user] => Array
        (
            [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                (
                    [@attributes] => Array
                        (
                            [id] => John123
                        )

                    [name] => John Smith
                    [city] => New York
                    [phone] => +1-8054098000
                )

            [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                (
                    [@attributes] => Array
                        (
                            [id] => Marry2015
                        )

                    [name] => Marry G.
                    [city] => London
                    [phone] => +33-147996101
                )

        )

)

❮ PHP SimpleXML Reference