PHP: How can I easily combine or merge simpleXML elements using a node value?

Question

I'm kinda new here in stackoverflow so forgive me in advance. :)

I'm trying to merge objects with the same BranchCode and basically, just making the Branch as a child of the main Product node. Please see my sample XML below. Thanks.

I have this XML (simpleXMLElement->asXML()):

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ArrayOfProduct xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>14</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>150</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>226</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>227</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>26</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>34</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>35</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>400A</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>405A</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>460A</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>57</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>83</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>C3</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-02-2166</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>Global</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>14</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>150</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>226</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>227</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>26</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>34</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>35</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>400A</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>405A</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>460A</BranchCode>
    <Available>5.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>57</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>83</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>C3</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>0.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
  <Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-051-2030</ProductCode>
    <BranchCode>Global</BranchCode>
    <Available>0.00</Available>
    <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
    <AvailableGlobally>5.00</AvailableGlobally>
  </Product>
</ArrayOfProduct>

And I want an output that is similar to this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ArrayOfProduct xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Product>
    <Customer>238500</Customer>
    <ProductCode>AAA-50-3535</ProductCode>
    <Branch>
       <BranchCode>C3</BranchCode>
       <Available>10.00</Available>
       <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
       <AvailableGlobally>100.00</AvailableGlobally>
    </Branch>
    <Branch>
       <BranchCode>A5</BranchCode>
       <Available>20.00</Available>
       <AvailableCSL>0.00</AvailableCSL>
       <AvailableGlobally>100.00</AvailableGlobally>
    </Branch>
    ....
    ....
  </Product>
  ....
  ....
</ArrayOfProduct>

Is there anything else in that XML document? If not, the simplest way is to create a new document in the right format by iterating over each product and copying its data. Otherwise, if you have to modify the structure of an existing document it would be simpler to use DOM (or perhaps even XSLT) rather than SimpleXML. — Josh Davis, Feb 03 '12 at 05:29
@JoshDavis: Yeah, there are other data in the XML that looks like that with a different ProductCode. Please see the updated post. Thanks for taking the time to look at my problem. Cheers! — Clemen Canaria, Feb 03 '12 at 13:10
possible duplicate of [SimpleXML: append one tree to another](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3418019/simplexml-append-one-tree-to-another) — Line, Feb 28 '14 at 15:31

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 04 '12 at 03:06

There isn't any built-in function that would merge documents, so you have to do that "by hand." One way to do it would be in PHP, using DOM. Select the <Product> nodes you want to process via XPath, create a <Branch> node to which you move all the child nodes, then append the <Branch> nodes to the correct <Product>.

$dom = new DOMDocument;
// Those two options are purely for cosmetic reasons, you can remove them
$dom->formatOutput = true;
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$dom->load('old.xml');

$ProductNodes = array();

$DOMXPath = new DOMXPath($dom);

foreach ($DOMXPath->query('/ArrayOfProduct/Product') as $Product)
{
    // Create a new <Branch/>
    $Branch = $dom->createElement('Branch');

    // Move the nodes to the <Branch/>, except for <Customer/> and <ProductCode/>
    $childNodes = $DOMXPath->query('./*[name() != "Customer"][name() != "ProductCode"]', $Product);
    foreach ($childNodes as $child)
    {
        $Branch->appendChild($Product->removeChild($child));
    }

    $key = $Product->getElementsByTagName('Customer')->item(0)->textContent
         . ':'
         . $Product->getElementsByTagName('ProductCode')->item(0)->textContent;

    // If it's not the first product with that combination of Customer:ProductCode, we remove the
    // node, otherwise we keep it and we'll append other branches to it
    if (isset($ProductNodes[$key]))
    {
        $Product->parentNode->removeChild($Product);
    }
    else
    {
        $ProductNodes[$key] = $Product;
    }

    $ProductNodes[$key]->appendChild($Branch);
}

echo $dom->saveXML();

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 04 '12 at 03:24

Alternatively, you can change the structure of a document with an Identity Transform. Here's one such example: (this one doesn't handle PI and comment nodes)

copy.xsl

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes" />

    <xsl:template match="@* | *">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | *"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="/ArrayOfProduct/Product">
        <!-- Check if it's the first Product node with that combination of Customer and ProductCode -->
        <xsl:if test="not(preceding-sibling::Product[Customer = current()/Customer and ProductCode = current()/ProductCode])">
            <xsl:copy>
                <!-- Copy the Customer and ProductCode nodes first -->
                <xsl:copy-of select="Customer | ProductCode" />

                <!-- Create a Branch for every Product with that combination of Customer and ProductCode -->
                <xsl:for-each select="/ArrayOfProduct/Product[Customer = current()/Customer and ProductCode = current()/ProductCode]">
                    <Branch>
                        <!-- Copy their children, except for Customer and ProductCode -->
                        <xsl:copy-of select="*[name() != 'Customer'][name() != 'ProductCode']"/>
                    </Branch>
                </xsl:for-each>
            </xsl:copy>
        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

You can run it in PHP:

$xml = new DOMDocument;
$xml->load('old.xml');

$xsl = new DOMDocument;
$xsl->load('copy.xsl');

$xslt = new XSLTProcessor;
$xslt->importStylesheet($xsl);

echo $xslt->transformToXml($xml);

PHP: How can I easily combine or merge simpleXML elements using a node value?

2 Answers2