PHP simplexml_load_file() Function

❮ PHP SimpleXML Reference

Example

Convert an XML file into an object, then output keys and elements of the object:

<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("note.xml");
print_r($xml);
?>

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Definition and Usage

The simplexml_load_file() function converts an XML document to an object.

Syntax

simplexml_load_file(file, class, options, ns, is_prefix)

Parameter Values

Parameter	Description
file	Required. Specifies the path to the XML file
class	Optional. Specifies the class of the new object
options	Optional. Specifies additional Libxml parameters. Is set by specifying the option and 1 or 0 (TRUE or FALSE, e.g. LIBXML_NOBLANKS(1)) Possible values: LIBXML_COMPACT - Activate nodes allocation optimization (may speed up application) LIBXML_DTDATTR - Set default DTD attributes LIBXML_DTDLOAD - Load external subset LIBXML_DTDVALID - Validate with the DTD LIBXML_NOBLANKS - Remove blank nodes LIBXML_NOCDATA - Merge CDATA as text nodes LIBXML_NOEMPTYTAG - Expand empty tags (e.g. <br/> to <br></br>), only available in the DOMDocument->save() and DOMDocument->saveXML() functions LIBXML_NOENT - Substitute entities LIBXML_NOERROR - Do not show error reports LIBXML_NONET - Disable network access while loading documents LIBXML_NOWARNING - Do not show warning reports LIBXML_NOXMLDECL - Drop the XML declaration when saving a document LIBXML_NSCLEAN - Remove redundant namespace declarations LIBXML_PARSEHUGE - Sets XML_PARSE_HUGE flag, which relaxes any hardcoded limit from the parser. This affects limits like maximum depth of a document and limits of the size of text nodes LIBXML_XINCLUDE - Implement XInclude substitution LIBXML_ERR_ERROR - Get recoverable errors LIBXML_ERR_FATAL - Get fatal errors LIBXML_ERR_NONE - Get no errors LIBXML_ERR_WARNING - Get simple warnings LIBXML_VERSION - Get libxml version (e.g. 20605 or 20617) LIBXML_DOTTED_VERSION - Get dotted libxml version (e.g. 2.6.5 or 2.6.17)
ns	Optional. Specifies a namespace prefix or URI
is_prefix	Optional. Specifies a Boolean value. TRUE if ns is a prefix. FALSE if ns is a URI. Default is FALSE

Technical Details

Return Value:	A SimpleXMLElement object on success. FALSE on failure
PHP Version:	5+

More Examples

Assume we have the following XML file, "note.xml":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<note>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

Example

Output the data from each element in the XML file:

<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("note.xml");
echo $xml->to . " ";
echo $xml->from . " ";
echo $xml->heading . " ";
echo $xml->body;
?>

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Example

Output the element's name and data for each child node in the XML file:

<?php
$xml=simplexml_load_file("note.xml");
echo $xml->getName() . " ";

foreach($xml->children() as $child)
 {
 echo $child->getName() . ": " . $child . " ";
 }
?>

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❮ PHP SimpleXML Reference