SimpleXMLElement::xpath

(PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

SimpleXMLElement::xpath — Runs XPath query on XML data

Description

public SimpleXMLElement::xpath(string $expression): array|null|false

The xpath method searches the SimpleXML node for children matching the XPath expression.

Parameters

expression

An XPath path

Return Values

Returns an array of SimpleXMLElement objects on success; or null or false in case of an error.

Examples

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');

foreach ($result as $node) {
echo '/a/b/c: ',$node,"\n";
}

/* Relative paths also work... */
$result = $xml->xpath('b/c');

foreach ($result as $node) {
echo 'b/c: ',$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.

See Also