How to convert array to SimpleXML

Question

How can I convert an array to a SimpleXML object in PHP?

Answer 1

I wanted a code that will take all the elements inside an array and treat them as attributes, and all arrays as sub elements.

So for something like

array (
'row1' => array ('head_element' =>array("prop1"=>"some value","prop2"=>array("empty"))),
"row2"=> array ("stack"=>"overflow","overflow"=>"overflow")
);

I would get something like this

To achive this the code is below, but be very careful, it is recursive and may actually cause a stackoverflow :)

function addElements(&$xml,$array)
{
$params=array();
foreach($array as $k=>$v)
{
    if(is_array($v))
        addElements($xml->addChild($k), $v);
    else $xml->addAttribute($k,$v);
}

}
function xml_encode($array)
{
if(!is_array($array))
    trigger_error("Type missmatch xml_encode",E_USER_ERROR);
$xml=new SimpleXMLElement('<'.key($array).'/>');
addElements($xml,$array[key($array)]);
return $xml->asXML();
} 

You may want to add checks for length of the array so that some element get set inside the data part and not as an attribute.