xref: /PHP-7.3/ext/simplexml/README (revision 3362620b)
1SimpleXML is meant to be an easy way to access XML data.
2
3SimpleXML objects follow four basic rules:
4
51) properties denote element iterators
62) numeric indices denote elements
73) non numeric indices denote attributes
84) string conversion allows to access TEXT data
9
10When iterating properties then the extension always iterates over
11all nodes with that element name. Thus method children() must be
12called to iterate over subnodes. But also doing the following:
13foreach ($obj->node_name as $elem) {
14  // do something with $elem
15}
16always results in iteration of 'node_name' elements. So no further
17check is needed to distinguish the number of nodes of that type.
18
19When an elements TEXT data is being accessed through a property
20then the result does not include the TEXT data of subelements.
21
22Known issues
23============
24
25Due to engine problems it is currently not possible to access
26a subelement by index 0: $object->property[0].
27
28TODO
29====
30
31At the moment property access to multiple elements of the same
32name returns an array of SimpleXML objects. This should be an
33object of a new type instead so that all kinds of linkage,
34assignment and deleting would work.
35