Using SimpleXML to create an XML object from scratch

Question

Is it possible to use PHP s SimpleXML functions to create an XML object from scratch   Looking through the function list  there s ways to import an existing XML string into an object that you can then manipulate  but if I just want to generate an XML object programmatically from scratch  what s the best way to do that   I figured out that you can use simplexml load string   and pass in the root string that you want  and then you ve got an object you can manipulate by adding children    although this seems like kind of a hack  since I have to actually hardcode some XML into the string before it can be loaded   I ve done it using the DOMDocument functions  although it s a little confusing because I m not sure what the DOM has to do with creating a pure XML document    so maybe it s just badly named  -

User · Accepted Answer

Sure you can   Eg    lt  php  newsXML   new SimpleXMLElement   lt news gt  lt  news gt      newsXML- gt addAttribute  newsPagePrefix    value goes here     newsIntro    newsXML- gt addChild  content     newsIntro- gt addAttribute  type    latest    Header  Content-type  text xml    echo  newsXML- gt asXML      gt    Output   lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt news newsPagePrefix  value goes here  gt       lt content type  latest   gt   lt  news gt    Have fun

User · Answer

Please see my answer here  As dreamwerx myopenid com points out  it is possible to do this with SimpleXML  but the DOM extension would be the better and more flexible way  Additionally there is a third way  using XMLWriter  It s much more simple to use than the DOM and therefore it s my preferred way of writing XML documents from scratch    w new XMLWriter     w- gt openMemory     w- gt startDocument  1 0   UTF-8     w- gt startElement  root         w- gt writeAttribute  ah    OK         w- gt text  Wow  it works      w- gt endElement    echo htmlentities  w- gt outputMemory true      By the way  DOM stands for Document Object Model  this is the standardized API into XML documents

User · Answer

In PHP5  you should use the Document Object Model class instead  Example    domDoc   new DOMDocument   rootElt    domDoc- gt createElement  root     rootNode    domDoc- gt appendChild  rootElt     subElt    domDoc- gt createElement  foo     attr    domDoc- gt createAttribute  ah     attrVal    domDoc- gt createTextNode  OK     attr- gt appendChild  attrVal    subElt- gt appendChild  attr    subNode    rootNode- gt appendChild  subElt     textNode    domDoc- gt createTextNode  Wow  it works      subNode- gt appendChild  textNode    echo htmlentities  domDoc- gt saveXML

[php] Using SimpleXML to create an XML object from scratch

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