SimpleXMLElement
PHP Manual

SimpleXMLElement::xpath

Runs XPath query on XML data

Description

public array SimpleXMLElement::xpath ( string $path )

The xpath method searches the SimpleXML node for children matching the XPath path.

Parameters

path

An XPath path

Return Values

Returns an array of SimpleXMLElement objects or FALSE in case of an error.

Examples

Example #1 Xpath

<?php
$string = <<<XML
<a>
 <b>
  <c>text</c>
  <c>stuff</c>
 </b>
 <d>
  <c>code</c>
 </d>
</a>
XML;

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($string);

/* Search for <a><b><c> */
$result = $xml->xpath('/a/b/c');

while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
    echo '/a/b/c: ',$node,"\n";
}

/* Relative paths also work... */
$result = $xml->xpath('b/c');

while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
    echo 'b/c: ',$node,"\n";
}
?>

The above example will output:

/a/b/c: text
/a/b/c: stuff
b/c: text
b/c: stuff

Notice that the two results are equal.

See Also

  • SimpleXMLElement::registerXPathNamespace
  • SimpleXMLElement::getDocNamespaces
  • SimpleXMLElement::getNamespaces
  • Basic SimpleXML usage