skip 2 element in xml code with php

Question

I have this XML data:

<root>
 <child>child1</child>
 <child>child2</child>
 <child>child3</child>
</root>

I can parse it with PHP:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);

I want to skip the first 2 children and get this result:

<root>
 <child>child3</child>
</root>

Thank you

Have you tried parsers yet? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3577641/how-do-you-parse-and-process-html-xml-in-php — chris85, Aug 07 '15 at 14:14

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

2

You can query the element you're interested in with an Xpath query:

$xml  = new SimpleXMLElement($string);

$last = $xml->xpath("child[last()]")[0];

Inspired by PHP: How to access the last element in a XML file.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

Community

1
1

answered Aug 07 '15 at 14:28

M1ke

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score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:06

If you ask in your question about removing all <child> elements until there is only one left, you can do that with a simple while-loop:

<?php
/**
 * skip 2 element in xml code with php
 *
 * @link https://stackoverflow.com/q/31879798/367456
 */
$string = <<<XML
<root>
 <child>child1</child>
 <child>child2</child>
 <child>child3</child>
</root>
XML;

$xml   = simplexml_load_string($string);

$child = $xml->child;

while ($child->count() > 1) {
    unset($child[0]);
}

$xml->asXML('php://output');

The output is (also: online-demo):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>


 <child>child3</child>
</root>

if you're only concerned to get the last element, use an xpath query as it has been suggested in the other answer. Do not even consider to use the array mish-mash of json encode decode - will only break the data you need to retain in the end.

skip 2 element in xml code with php

2 Answers2