PHP: How to handle <![CDATA[ with SimpleXMLElement?
PhpXmlTagsCdataPhp Problem Overview
I noticed that when using SimpleXMLElement on a document that contains those CDATA tags, the content is always NULL. How do I fix this?
Also, sorry for spamming about XML here. I have been trying to get an XML based script to work for several hours now...
<content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content>
I tried the first hit on Google if you search for "SimpleXMLElement cdata", but that didn't work.
Php Solutions
Solution 1 - Php
You're probably not accessing it correctly. You can output it directly or cast it as a string. (in this example, the casting is superfluous, as echo automatically does it anyway)
$content = simplexml_load_string(
'<content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content>'
);
echo (string) $content;
// or with parent element:
$foo = simplexml_load_string(
'<foo><content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content></foo>'
);
echo (string) $foo->content;
You might have better luck with LIBXML_NOCDATA:
$content = simplexml_load_string(
'<content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content>'
, null
, LIBXML_NOCDATA
);
Solution 2 - Php
The LIBXML_NOCDATA is optional third parameter of simplexml_load_file() function. This returns the XML object with all the CDATA data converted into strings.
$xml = simplexml_load_file($this->filename, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($xml);
echo "</pre>";
Solution 3 - Php
This did the trick for me:
echo trim($entry->title);
Solution 4 - Php
This is working perfect for me.
$content = simplexml_load_string(
$raw_xml
, null
, LIBXML_NOCDATA
);
Solution 5 - Php
When to use LIBXML_NOCDATA ?
I add the issue when transforming XML to JSON.
$xml = simplexml_load_string("<foo><content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content></foo>");
echo json_encode($xml, true);
/* prints
{
"content": {}
}
*/
When accessing the SimpleXMLElement object, It gets the CDATA :
$xml = simplexml_load_string("<foo><content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content></foo>");
echo $xml->content;
/* prints
Hello, world!
*/
I makes sense to use LIBXML_NOCDATA because json_encode don't access the SimpleXMLElement to trigger the string casting feature, I'm guessing a __toString() equivalent.
$xml = simplexml_load_string("<foo><content><![CDATA[Hello, world!]]></content></foo>", null, LIBXML_NOCDATA);
echo json_encode($xml);
/*
{
"content": "Hello, world!"
}
*/
Solution 6 - Php
While using SimpleXMLElement class directly
new SimpleXMLElement($rawXml, LIBXML_NOCDATA);