PHP SimpleXMLElement - __construct() Method

The PHP SimpleXMLElement::__construct() method creates a new SimpleXMLElement object.

Syntax

public SimpleXMLElement::__construct(data, options, dataIsURL, 
                                     namespaceOrPrefix, isPrefix)

Parameters

`data`	`Required.` Specify a XML string or the path or URL to an XML document if dataIsURL is true.
`options`	`Optional.` Use this parameter to specify additional Libxml parameters, which affect reading of XML documents.
`dataIsURL`	`Optional.` If set to true the data is considered as a path or URL to an XML document instead of string data. Default is false.
`namespaceOrPrefix`	`Optional.` Namespace prefix or URI.
`isPrefix`	`Optional.` If true, namespaceOrPrefix will be regarded as a prefix. If false, namespaceOrPrefix will be regarded as a URI. Default is false.

Return Value

Returns a SimpleXMLElement object representing data.

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: creating a SimpleXMLElement object

In the example below, this method is used to convert the 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;

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($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
                )

        )

)

Example: creating a SimpleXMLElement object from a URL

In the example below, a SimpleXMLElement object is created from a URL.

<?php
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('http://example.org/document.xml', NULL, TRUE);
echo $xml->asXML();
?>

❮ PHP SimpleXML Reference