PHP convert XML to JSON

Question

I am trying to convert xml to json in php. If I do a simple convert using simple xml and json_encode none of the attributes in the xml show.

$xml = simplexml_load_file("states.xml");
echo json_encode($xml);

So I am trying to manually parse it like this.

foreach($xml->children() as $state)
{
    $states[]= array('state' => $state->name); 
}       
echo json_encode($states);

and the output for state is {"state":{"0":"Alabama"}} rather than {"state":"Alabama"}

What am I doing wrong?

XML:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<states>
    <state id="AL">     
    <name>Alabama</name>
    </state>
    <state id="AK">
        <name>Alaska</name>
    </state>
</states>

Output:

[{"state":{"0":"Alabama"}},{"state":{"0":"Alaska"}

var dump:

object(SimpleXMLElement)#1 (1) {
["state"]=>
array(2) {
[0]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#3 (2) {
  ["@attributes"]=>
  array(1) {
    ["id"]=>
    string(2) "AL"
  }
  ["name"]=>
  string(7) "Alabama"
}
[1]=>
object(SimpleXMLElement)#2 (2) {
  ["@attributes"]=>
  array(1) {
    ["id"]=>
    string(2) "AK"
  }
  ["name"]=>
  string(6) "Alaska"
}
}
}

Answer 1

Optimizing Antonio Max answer:

$xmlfile = 'yourfile.xml';
$xmlparser = xml_parser_create();

// open a file and read data
$fp = fopen($xmlfile, 'r');
//9999999 is the length which fread stops to read.
$xmldata = fread($fp, 9999999);

// converting to XML
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmldata, "SimpleXMLElement", LIBXML_NOCDATA);

// converting to JSON
$json = json_encode($xml);
$array = json_decode($json,TRUE);

Answer 2

$templateData =  $_POST['data'];

// initializing or creating array
$template_info =  $templateData;

// creating object of SimpleXMLElement
$xml_template_info = new SimpleXMLElement("<?xml version=\"1.0\"?><template></template>");

// function call to convert array to xml
array_to_xml($template_info,$xml_template_info);

//saving generated xml file
 $xml_template_info->asXML(dirname(__FILE__)."/manifest.xml") ;

// function defination to convert array to xml
function array_to_xml($template_info, &$xml_template_info) {
    foreach($template_info as $key => $value) {
        if(is_array($value)) {
            if(!is_numeric($key)){
                $subnode = $xml_template_info->addChild($key);
                if(is_array($value)){
                    $cont = 0;
                    foreach(array_keys($value) as $k){
                        if(is_numeric($k)) $cont++;
                    }
                }

                if($cont>0){
                    for($i=0; $i < $cont; $i++){
                        $subnode = $xml_body_info->addChild($key);
                        array_to_xml($value[$i], $subnode);
                    }
                }else{
                    $subnode = $xml_body_info->addChild($key);
                    array_to_xml($value, $subnode);
                }
            }
            else{
                array_to_xml($value, $xml_template_info);
            }
        }
        else {
            $xml_template_info->addChild($key,$value);
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

I figured it out. json_encode handles objects differently than strings. I cast the object to a string and it works now.

foreach($xml->children() as $state)
{
    $states[]= array('state' => (string)$state->name); 
}       
echo json_encode($states);

Answer 4

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml_string);
$json = json_encode($xml);
$array = json_decode($json,TRUE);

just add those three lines you will get the correct output:-)

Answer 5

Sorry for answering an old post, but this article outlines an approach that is relatively short, concise and easy to maintain. I tested it myself and works pretty well.

http://lostechies.com/seanbiefeld/2011/10/21/simple-xml-to-json-with-php/

<?php   
class XmlToJson {
    public function Parse ($url) {
        $fileContents= file_get_contents($url);
        $fileContents = str_replace(array("\n", "\r", "\t"), '', $fileContents);
        $fileContents = trim(str_replace('"', "'", $fileContents));
        $simpleXml = simplexml_load_string($fileContents);
        $json = json_encode($simpleXml);

        return $json;
    }
}
?>

Answer 6

I guess I'm a bit late to the party but I have written a small function to accomplish this task. It also takes care of attributes, text content and even if multiple nodes with the same node-name are siblings.

Dislaimer: I'm not a PHP native, so please bear with simple mistakes.

function xml2js($xmlnode) {
    $root = (func_num_args() > 1 ? false : true);
    $jsnode = array();

    if (!$root) {
        if (count($xmlnode->attributes()) > 0){
            $jsnode["$"] = array();
            foreach($xmlnode->attributes() as $key => $value)
                $jsnode["$"][$key] = (string)$value;
        }

        $textcontent = trim((string)$xmlnode);
        if (count($textcontent) > 0)
            $jsnode["_"] = $textcontent;

        foreach ($xmlnode->children() as $childxmlnode) {
            $childname = $childxmlnode->getName();
            if (!array_key_exists($childname, $jsnode))
                $jsnode[$childname] = array();
            array_push($jsnode[$childname], xml2js($childxmlnode, true));
        }
        return $jsnode;
    } else {
        $nodename = $xmlnode->getName();
        $jsnode[$nodename] = array();
        array_push($jsnode[$nodename], xml2js($xmlnode, true));
        return json_encode($jsnode);
    }
}   

Usage example:

$xml = simplexml_load_file("myfile.xml");
echo xml2js($xml);

Example Input (myfile.xml):

<family name="Johnson">
    <child name="John" age="5">
        <toy status="old">Trooper</toy>
        <toy status="old">Ultrablock</toy>
        <toy status="new">Bike</toy>
    </child>
</family>

Example output:

{"family":[{"$":{"name":"Johnson"},"child":[{"$":{"name":"John","age":"5"},"toy":[{"$":{"status":"old"},"_":"Trooper"},{"$":{"status":"old"},"_":"Ultrablock"},{"$":{"status":"new"},"_":"Bike"}]}]}]}

Pretty printed:

{
    "family" : [{
            "$" : {
                "name" : "Johnson"
            },
            "child" : [{
                    "$" : {
                        "name" : "John",
                        "age" : "5"
                    },
                    "toy" : [{
                            "$" : {
                                "status" : "old"
                            },
                            "_" : "Trooper"
                        }, {
                            "$" : {
                                "status" : "old"
                            },
                            "_" : "Ultrablock"
                        }, {
                            "$" : {
                                "status" : "new"
                            },
                            "_" : "Bike"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Quirks to keep in mind: Several tags with the same tagname can be siblings. Other solutions will most likely drop all but the last sibling. To avoid this each and every single node, even if it only has one child, is an array which hold an object for each instance of the tagname. (See multiple "" elements in example)

Even the root element, of which only one should exist in a valid XML document is stored as array with an object of the instance, just to have a consistent data structure.

To be able to distinguish between XML node content and XML attributes each objects attributes are stored in the "$" and the content in the "_" child.

Edit: I forgot to show the output for your example input data

{
    "states" : [{
            "state" : [{
                    "$" : {
                        "id" : "AL"
                    },
                    "name" : [{
                            "_" : "Alabama"
                        }
                    ]
                }, {
                    "$" : {
                        "id" : "AK"
                    },
                    "name" : [{
                            "_" : "Alaska"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}