PHP convert XML to JSON

Question

I am trying to convert xml to json in php. If I do a simple convert using simple xml and json_encode none of the attributes in the xml show.

$xml = simplexml         


        

Answer 1

A common pitfall is to forget that json_encode() does not respect elements with a textvalue and attribute(s). It will choose one of those, meaning dataloss. The function below solves that problem. If one decides to go for the json_encode/decode way, the following function is advised.

function json_prepare_xml($domNode) {
  foreach($domNode->childNodes as $node) {
    if($node->hasChildNodes()) {
      json_prepare_xml($node);
    } else {
      if($domNode->hasAttributes() && strlen($domNode->nodeValue)){
         $domNode->setAttribute("nodeValue", $node->textContent);
         $node->nodeValue = "";
      }
    }
  }
}

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML( file_get_contents($xmlfile) );
json_prepare_xml($dom);
$sxml = simplexml_load_string( $dom->saveXML() );
$json = json_decode( json_encode( $sxml ) );

by doing so, Lorem will not end up as {"foo":"Lorem"} in your JSON.