How to parse tag in RSS with simplexml

Question

Structure of my RSS from http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss is:





  
    <![CDATA[CNN.com - RSS Channel - Intl Homepage - News]]>
    
    http://www.cnn.com/intl_index.html
    ...

    
      <![CDATA[Russia responds to claims it has damaging material on Trump]]>
      
      http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/russia-rejects-trump-allegations/index.html
      http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/russia-rejects-trump-allegations/index.html
      Wed, 11 Jan 2017 14:44:49 GMT
      
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
      
    
    ...

If you parse this XML with simplexml like this:

  $rss = simplexml_load_file($url, null, LIBXML_NOCDATA);

  $rssjson = json_encode($rss);
  $rssarray = json_decode($rssjson, TRUE);

you will see that is simply missing in $rssarray items. So I found a tutorial with "namespace" solution. However, in the example author is using:

foreach ($xml->channel->item as $item) { ... }

but I am using (cannot use foreach for some reasons):

$rssjson = json_encode($rss);
$rssarray = json_decode($rssjson, TRUE);

So I modified the solution for my case like this:

  $rss = simplexml_load_file($url, null, LIBXML_NOCDATA);
  $namespaces = $rss->getNamespaces(true); // get namespaces

  $rssjson = json_encode($rss);
  $rssarray = json_decode($rssjson, TRUE);

  if (isset($rssarray['channel']['item'])) {
    foreach ($rssarray['channel']['item'] as $key => $item) {

      $media_content = $rss->channel->item[$key]->children($namespaces['media']);
      foreach($media_content as $tag) {

        $tagjson = json_encode($tag);
        $tagarray = json_decode($tagjson, TRUE);

      }

    }
  }

But it does not work. For every item I get in $tagarray as a result an array with this structure:

Array(
  'content' => array(
     '0' => array(null),
     '1' => array(null),
     ...
     '11' => array(null),
   )
)

It is an array with as many items as is the count of tags, but every item is empty. I need to get an url attribute of every item. What am I doing wrong and getting an empty array?

&#193;lvaro Gonz&#225;lez · Accepted Answer

Tags are actually empty:

^^

Information is contained in attributes, which can be fetched with SimpleXMLElement::attributes(), e.g.:

$rss = simplexml_load_file($url, null, LIBXML_NOCDATA);
$namespaces = $rss->getNamespaces(true);
$media_content = $rss->channel->item[0]->children($namespaces['media']);
foreach($media_content->group->content as $i){
    var_dump((string)$i->attributes()->url);
}

I suspect the problem comes from the JSON trick. SimpleXML generates all its classes and properties dynamically (they aren't regular PHP classes), what means that you can't fully rely on standard PHP features like print_r() or json_encode(). This gets illustrated if you insert this in the above loop:

var_dump($i, json_encode($i), (string)$i->attributes()->url);

object(SimpleXMLElement)#2 (0) {
}
string(2) "{}"
string(91) "http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/161115120658-trump-putin-t1-tease-super-169.jpg"
...

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