simplexml_load_string not creating an object

Question

My XML is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   <soap:Body>
      <FindOrders xmlns="http://www.JOI.com/schemas/ViaSub.WMS/">
         <orders>
            <order>
               <MarkForName />
               <BatchOrderID />
               <CreationDate>2013-08-09T17:41:00</CreationDate>
               <EarliestShipDate />
               <ShipCancelDate />
               <PickupDate />
               <Carrier>USPS</Carrier>
               <BillingCode>Prepaid</BillingCode>
               <TotWeight>0.00</TotWeight>
               <TotCuFt>0.00</TotCuFt>
               <TotPackages>1.0000</TotPackages>
               <TotOrdQty>1.0000</TotOrdQty>
               <TotLines>1.00</TotLines>
               <Notes />
               <OverAllocated />
               <PickTicketPrintDate />
               <ProcessDate />
               <TrackingNumber />
               <LoadNumber />
               <BillOfLading />
               <MasterBillOfLading />
               <ASNSentDate />
               <ConfirmASNSentDate />
               <RememberRowInfo>398879:12:2:::0:False</RememberRowInfo>
            </order>
         </orders>
      </FindOrders>
      <totalOrders xmlns="http://www.JOI.com/schemas/ViaSub.WMS/">1</totalOrders>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

When I do:

$a = simplexml_load_string($str);

print_r($a);

I get: SimpleXMLElement Object ( ) instead of an object with all of those parameters. Why is this?

Answer 1

I'm guessing when you say you want to see an object with all those parameters, you're looking to output the xml document you just created.

Looking at the documentation at http://www.php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.asxml.php, here's what you need to do:

echo $a->asXML();

Answer 2

My case was dealing with soap response. I have to parse and clean it first before converting it to array.

$response = preg_replace("/(<\/?)(\w+):([^>]*>)/", "$1$2$3", $xml); // remove all colons and unnecessary characters.
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($response);
$body = $xml->xpath('//sBody'); // should refer to soap body element like soapbody, sbody, etc..
$array = json_decode(json_encode((array)$body), TRUE);