SimpleXMLElement::xpath

(PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

SimpleXMLElement::xpathRuns 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