(PHP 5 >= 5.2.0)
SimpleXMLElement::xpath — Runs XPath query on XML data
The xpath method searches the SimpleXML node for children matching the XPath path.
An XPath path
Returns an array of SimpleXMLElement objects or FALSE in case of an error.
Example #1 Xpath
<?php
$string = <<<XML
<a>
<b>
<c>text</c>
<c>stuff</c>
</b>
<d>
<c>code</c>
</d>
</a>
XML;
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($string);
/* Search for <a><b><c> */
$result = $xml->xpath('/a/b/c');
while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
echo '/a/b/c: ',$node,"\n";
}
/* Relative paths also work... */
$result = $xml->xpath('b/c');
while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
echo 'b/c: ',$node,"\n";
}
?>
The above example will output:
/a/b/c: text /a/b/c: stuff b/c: text b/c: stuff
Notice that the two results are equal.