asked on

add empty xml node?

If I add an extra node that has no data, I get a
compiler error: Warning: SimpleXMLElement::addChild() [simplexmlelement.addchild]: Element name is required in

How do I fix this?

$xml= simplexml_load_string( "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?><note><to>Tove</to><from>Jani</from><heading>Reminder</heading><body>Don't forget</body></note>");


$newElement = simplexml_load_string('<address></address>');


$xml->addChild($newElement);

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Beverley Portlock

Try

<?php
$xml= simplexml_load_string( "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"?><note><to>Tove</to><from>Jani</from><heading>Reminder</heading><body>Don't forget</body></note>");

$xml->addChild('address');

Ray Paseur

I thought we had answered this recently...

<?php // RAY_temp_pillmill.php

$obj = simplexml_load_string('<tree></tree>');
$obj->addChild("fred");
$obj->fred = 'Flintstone';

echo htmlentities( $obj->asXml() );

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Ray Paseur

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Beverley Portlock

@Ray "I thought we had answered this recently..."

It seems like XML and strtotime are the "flavours of the month" at present. Chances are you answered one very similar to it.

pillmill

ASKER

Thanks. That solved the problem.

Now, instead of one node, I want to "append" a whole xml string to
the original structure. addChild throws an error: "Element name is required".

Is there a way to append with simpleXML?

Beverley Portlock

Do you mean that you just want to tack on another chunk of XML after the last element like so

(before)
</lastElement>
?>

(after)
</lastElement>
<newStuff>...........
?>

I would do this by converting the current XML to a string, doing the append and then creating a new XML. It is not liable to be successful as you will probably break the well-formedness rules for XML

$temp = $xml->asXml();
$temp .= $moreXml;
$newXml = simplexml_load_string( $temp );

Personally I would just create a new child node and put it in there

$xml->addChild("moreXml", $moreXml );

pillmill

ASKER

Thanks. Also worked. But some of the entities are with
html characters and some not. How do I change all of the
> and < and still keeps this as an xml object?

Beverley Portlock

Your best option is to encode it as CDATA so that XML does not interpret it. See

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_cdata.asp

You could also try encoding it with htmlentities before inserting in the XML, but CDATA is the "official" way

http://www.php.net/htmlentities
http://www.php.net/html_entity_decode