How to handle if <![CDATA[ ]]> is null/empty?

Question

I want to convert xml data into JOSN format but there is an issue if I try to do that. simplexml_load_string() returns empty data once after it perhaps get <![CDATA[ ]]> empty character data

Input Xml data

<channel>
    <title>
      <![CDATA[shop1]]>
    </title>
    <link>
      <![CDATA[https://www.shop1.com]]>
    </link>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[ ]]>
    </description>
    <item>
      <g:id>1516002</g:id>
      <g:title>
        <![CDATA[ product 1]]>
      </g:title>
    </item>
    <item>
      <g:id>1516003</g:id>
      <g:title>
        <![CDATA[ product 2 ]]>
      </g:title>
    </item>
  </channel>

---

Laravel Code:

public function store()
{
    $xmlDataString = file_get_contents($this->url);
    $xml_file = simplexml_load_string($xmlDataString,'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
    $json = json_encode($xml_file,TRUE);
    $array = json_decode($json,TRUE);

    dd($array)
    //Product::insert($array);

}

---

output

 ^ array:2 [▼
  "@attributes" => array:1 [▶]
  "channel" => array:4 [▼
    "title" => "shop1"
    "link" => "https://www.shop1.com"
    "description" => []
    "item" => array:2[▼
      0 => []
      1 => []
    ]
  ]
]

I thought fault raise from <![CDATA[ ]]> here

what is the best way to fetch data from xml to json ?

Answer 1

If you know clearly about xml file structure, you can use like this code, it works well with cdata:

$this->url = 'xml3.xml';
$xml = file_get_contents($this->url);

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);
$title = trim((string) $xml->channel->title);
$description = trim((string) $xml->channel->description);
$result = [];
foreach($xml->channel->item as $item) {
    $result [] = [
        'id' => trim((string) $item->children('g', TRUE)->id),
        'title' => trim((string) $item->children('g', TRUE)->title)
    ];
}
$all = ['title'=>$title, 'description'=>$description, 'items'=>$result];
dd($all);

Result:

array:3 [?
  "title" => "shop1"
  "description" => ""
  "items" => array:2 [?
    0 => array:2 [?
      "id" => "1516002"
      "title" => "product 1"
    ]
    1 => array:2 [?
      "id" => "1516003"
      "title" => "product 2"
    ]
  ]
]