simplexml help how do I parse this?

Question

I haven't done any xml projects, so I'm not quite sure what to do with this data...

I'm using curl to make a request to salesforce, and they give me back a response that I need to parse. I want to use simplexml. Here's part of the response:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns="urn:partner.soap.sforce.com" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<soapenv:Body>

<loginResponse>

<result>

<metadataServerUrl>

https://na6-api.salesforce.com/services/Soap/m/18.0/

</metadataServerUrl>

<passwordExpired>

false

</passwordExpired>

<sandbox>

false

</sandbox>

<serverUrl>

https://na6-api.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/18.0/

</serverUrl>

<sessionId>

!AQ4AQLtDIqY.

</sessionId>

<userId>

</userId>

<userInfo>

<accessibilityMode>

false

</accessibilityMode>

<currencySymbol>

$

</currencySymbol>

<orgDefaultCurrencyIsoCode>

USD

</orgDefaultCurrencyIsoCode>

<orgDisallowHtmlAttachments>

false

</orgDisallowHtmlAttachments>

<orgHasPersonAccounts>

false

</orgHasPersonAccounts>

<organizationId>

</organizationId>

<organizationMultiCurrency>

false

</organizationMultiCurrency>

<organizationName>

Ox 

</organizationName>

<profileId>

sdfgsdfg

</profileId>

<roleId>

sdfgsdfg

</roleId>

<userDefaultCurrencyIsoCode xsi:nil="true"/>

<userEmail>

###@gmail.com

</userEmail>

<userFullName>

### ###

</userFullName>

<userId>

asdfasdf

</userId>

<userLanguage>

en_US

</userLanguage>

<userLocale>

en_US

</userLocale>

<userName>

[email protected]

</userName>

<userTimeZone>

America/Chicago

</userTimeZone>

<userType>

Standard

</userType>

<userUiSkin>

Theme3

</userUiSkin>

</userInfo>

</result>

</loginResponse>

</soapenv:Body>

</soapenv:Envelope>

Anyway, I expected to feed that stuff (we'll call it data) into

$results = simplexml_load_string($data);

var_dump($results);

And that would give me all the data back... and then to access specific parts, it would be $results->body->loginResponse->blah->blah...

But It's not giving me that, it's not really giving me anything back, just an empty simple xml object...

So one website made me think I might need an XSLT to read this correctly.
Or something else made me think it's because I don't have at the top.

Help!

Answer 1

It is possible for you to use SimpleXML but it's not as simple as you think due to the use of namespaces (e.g. soapenv). Look into using SimpleXMLElement::children like:

$sxe = new SimpleXMLElement($data);

$login_response = $sxe->children('soapenv', TRUE)->Body->children('', TRUE)->loginResponse->result;

// Now that we have the <loginResponse> lets take a look at an item within it

echo $login_response->userInfo->userEmail;

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