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A lightweight PHP library for simple XML parsing and generation. Provides convenient methods to convert between XML strings and PHP arrays.

Features

• Convert XML strings to PHP arrays
• Convert PHP arrays to XML strings
• CDATA support for handling special characters
• XML sanitization to remove invalid characters
• Simple and intuitive API
• Customizable root and child node names
• Support for XML attributes
• Special boolean value handling

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.1
• ext-simplexml
• ext-libxml

Installation

Install via Composer:

composer require tourze/xml-helper

Quick Start

Import the namespace

use Tourze\XML\XML;

Convert XML to Array

$xml = '<xml><name><![CDATA[John Doe]]></name><age>25</age></xml>';
$array = XML::parse($xml);

// Result:
// [
//     'name' => 'John Doe',
//     'age' => '25'
// ]

Convert Array to XML

$array = [
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'age' => 25
];

$xml = XML::build($array);
// Result: <xml><name><![CDATA[John Doe]]></name><age>25</age></xml>

Documentation

XML::parse(string $xml): array

Parses an XML string into a PHP array.

$xml = '<xml><user><name>Alice</name><age>30</age></user></xml>';
$array = XML::parse($xml);

XML::build(array $data, string $root = 'xml', string $item = 'item', $attr = '', $id = 'id', $cdata = true, $listKey = [], $specialBool = false): string

Converts a PHP array to an XML string.

Parameters:

• $data: The array to convert
• $root: Root element name (default: 'xml')
• $item: Default name for numerically indexed items (default: 'item')
• $attr: XML attributes for the root element (string or array)
• $id: Attribute name for numeric keys (default: 'id')
• $cdata: Whether to wrap string values in CDATA (default: true)
• $listKey: Array of keys to format as a flat list
• $specialBool: Whether to output boolean values as 'true'/'false' strings (default: false)

// With custom root element
$xml = XML::build($array, 'root');

// With attributes
$xml = XML::build($array, 'xml', 'item', ['version' => '1.0', 'encoding' => 'UTF-8']);

// Handling lists with nested objects
$listData = [
    'products' => [
        ['name' => 'Product 1', 'price' => 100],
        ['name' => 'Product 2', 'price' => 200]
    ]
];
$xml = XML::build($listData, 'root', 'item', '', 'id', true, ['products']);

XML::cdata(string $string): string

Wraps a string in CDATA tags.

$cdata = XML::cdata('Special characters & < >');
// Result: <![CDATA[Special characters & < >]]>

XML::sanitize(string $xml): string

Removes invalid XML characters from a string.

$safeXml = XML::sanitize($potentiallyInvalidXml);

Example Use Cases

Working with API Responses

// Parse an XML API response
$xmlResponse = getAPIResponse(); // Returns XML string
$data = XML::parse($xmlResponse);

// Process the data as a PHP array
$processedData = processData($data);

// Convert back to XML if needed
$xmlOut = XML::build($processedData);

Handling Complex Structures

$data = [
    'header' => [
        'version' => '1.0',
        'encoding' => 'UTF-8'
    ],
    'body' => [
        'user' => [
            'name' => 'Jane Smith',
            'email' => 'jane@example.com',
            'roles' => [
                'role' => ['admin', 'editor']
            ]
        ],
        'status' => true
    ]
];

$xml = XML::build($data, 'message', 'item', '', 'id', true, [], true);

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Testing

composer test

License

This package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more information.