How-To: Fix SimpleXML CDATA problem in php
If you’ve used the SimpleXML functions in PHP, you may have noticed some strange things happening with CDATA values in your XML file/string. All I needed to do was extract the value of my CDATA fields, however these were always coming back blank in the structure that simplexml_load_file returns.
Finally, after hours of trawling google, I’ve come up with the following solution:
$xml = simplexml_load_file($this->filename,
'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
Use this line of code when you are loading the XML file into the SimpleXML Object. The key is the LIBXML_NOCDATA option as the third parameter. This returns the XML object with all the CDATA data converted into strings. You can read about this in the php manual.
This solved all the problems I was having getting CDATA values out of SimpleXML in php. Hope it helps someone.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:00 am
thank you for pre-trawling for me !
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 am
How about assigning an inner text to a node where the new text contains CDATA? It is transforming the entities:
$xml->Image[$index]->Comment = “![CDATA[" . html_entity_decode($_POST['imgcaption']) . “]]”;
This example code is to add an HTML caption to an image definition in an XML document. The entities are still htmlencoded in the output XML.
Thanks!
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I’m having the same problem but do not use simplexml. I have PHP4 installed on godaddy and need to solve the problem.
My description string is a CDATA and changes each time I refresh the brower.
class xItem {
var $xAddress;
var $xLink;
var $xDescription;
var $xPrice;
var $xCity;
var $xPicLinks;
}
// Array to convert XML entities back to plain text.
$XmlEntities = array(
‘&’ => ‘&’,
‘<’ => ‘ ‘>’,
‘'’ => ‘\”,
‘"’ => ‘”‘,
);
// general vars
$sTitle = “”;
$sLink = “”;
$sDescription = “”;
$arItems = array();
$itemCount = 0;
// ********* Start User-Defined Vars ************
// rss url goes here
$uFile = “http://mountsnowpalmiter.idxco.com/idx/feeds/3036/advancedFeed.xml”;
// descriptions (true or false) goes here
$bDesc = true;
// ********* End User-Defined Vars **************
function startElement($parser, $name, $attrs) {
global $curTag;
$curTag .= “^$name”;
}
function endElement($parser, $name) {
global $curTag;
$caret_pos = strrpos($curTag,’^');
$curTag = substr($curTag,0,$caret_pos);
}
function characterData($parser, $data) { global $curTag; // get the Channel information first
global $sTitle, $sLink, $sDescription;
$titleKey = “^FEATURED^BROKER_INFO^TITLE”;
$linkKey = “^FEATURED^BROKER_INFO^LINK”;
$descKey = “^FEATURED^BROKER_INFO^DESCRIPTION”;
if ($curTag == $titleKey) {
$sTitle = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $linkKey) {
$sLink = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $descKey) {
$sDescription = $data;
}
// now get the items
global $arItems, $itemCount;
$itemLinkKey = “^FEATURED^LISTING^LINK”;
$itemDescKey = “^FEATURED^LISTING^DESCRIPTION”;
$itemPriceKey = “^FEATURED^LISTING^PRICE”;
$itemAddressKey = “^FEATURED^LISTING^STREET-ADDRESS”;
$itemCityKey = “^FEATURED^LISTING^CITY-NAME”;
$itemPicLinksKey = “^FEATURED^LISTING^PICTURES”;
if ($curTag == $itemLinkKey) {
// make new xItem
$arItems[$itemCount] = new xItem();
// set new item objects properties
$arItems[$itemCount]->xLink = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $itemDescKey) {
$arItems[$itemCount]->xDescription = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $itemPriceKey) {
$arItems[$itemCount]->xPrice = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $itemAddressKey) {
$arItems[$itemCount]->xAddress = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $itemCityKey) {
$arItems[$itemCount]->xCity = $data;
}
elseif ($curTag == $itemPicLinksKey) {
$arItems[$itemCount]->xPicLinks = $data;
// increment item counter
$itemCount++;
}
}
// main loop
$xml_parser = xml_parser_create();
xml_set_element_handler($xml_parser, “startElement”, “endElement”);
xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, “characterData”);
if (!($fp = fopen($uFile,”r”))) {
die (“could not open featured for input”);
}
while ($data = fread($fp, 4096)) {
if (!xml_parse($xml_parser, $data, feof($fp))) {
die(sprintf(“RSS error: %s at line %d”, xml_error_string(xml_get_error_code($xml_parser)), xml_get_current_line_number($xml_parser)));
}
}
xml_parser_free($xml_parser);
// write out the items
?>
December 16th, 2008 at 5:54 am
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March 4th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
champion! ta for saving me those hours of googling
July 11th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
[...] This is the link that save me: http://blog.evandavey.com/2008/04/how-to-fix-simplexml-cdata-problem-in-php.html [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Thank you, great tip.
October 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Thanks for saving me god knows how many hours of trawling. I was expecting it to be very painful.
Cheers!!!!!
October 27th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
i m still getting blank values
please help
October 30th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Man, you’re a savior. Definitely helped me. Thanks
November 18th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Excellent. Thanks for bothering to share this.
November 26th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[...] How-To: Fix SimpleXML CDATA problem in php Tags: cdata, php, regex, simplexmlelement, xml [...]
January 21st, 2010 at 2:10 am
thank you!
I encountered the same problem
January 27th, 2010 at 2:40 am
Thank you for this, sir! It was very helpful!