SimpleXMLElement::xpath

(PHP 5 >= 5.2.0, PHP 7)

Runs XPath query on XML data

public array SimpleXMLElement::xpath ( string $path )

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

Parameters:

path

An XPath path

Returns:

Returns an array of SimpleXMLElement objects or FALSE in case of an error.

Examples:

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');

while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
    echo '/a/b/c: ',$node,"\n";
}

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

while(list( , $node) = each($result)) {
    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.