How to concatenate similar tags in a XML file

Question

There can be one or many similar XML tags inside a single XML record set. If there are many, I need them to be in a one tag, comma separated. This is the XML I have now.

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Answer 1

This can be done with xpath. Here is an example with Simplexml:

You can first find all the first leafs:

foreach ($xml->xpath('//*[not(*) and not(preceding-sibling::*)]') as $firstLeaf) {
    ...
}

and then you concat the text together with all the following leafs:

    $followingWithSameName = 'following-sibling::*[name(.) = name(preceding-sibling::*[last()])]';
    // change the text of the first leaf
    $firstLeaf[0] = implode(', ', $firstLeaf->xpath(".|$followingWithSameName"));

and then you remove all the following leafs:

    // remove all following leafs with the same name
    foreach ($firstLeaf->xpath($followingWithSameName) as $leaf) {
        unset($leaf[0]);
    }

Demo