PHP & Xpath query

[breham]

I have a routine to parse xml which usually works fine but am having an issue with one particular XML file.

usually I have a structure of

<person>
<name>Joe Bloggs</name>
<age>21</age>
</person>
<person>
<name>Sarah Bloggs</name>
<age>25</age>
</person>

Which I usually parse with a string like this:

foreach ($xml->xpath('//name') as $names) {

I have another XML file which has a different format and takes the following format:

<Names>
<name>Joe Bloggs</name>
<age>21</age>
</Names>
<Names>
<name>Sarah Bloggs</name>
<age>25</age>
</Names>

The problem I've got is that because the top level is also contains the phrase names which I search for with XPath - the parsing doesn't work.

Any suggestions gratefully received

[azazello]

You need to wrap your XML in a top level element.

How about something like :-

[pre]
$xml=<<<XML
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<doc>
 <person>
  <name>Joe Bloggs</name> 
  <age>21</age>
 </person>
 <person> 
  <name>Sarah Bloggs</name> 
  <age>25</age> 
 </person>
</doc>
XML;
$doc=new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
var_dump($doc->xpath('//person/name'));
[/pre]

[breham]

Hi,

thanks for that but I can not alter the XML, it is sent to me via the web, also the XML that starts Person is fine to process - it's the one that starts Names that is the issue.

thanks again, any other ideas thoguh?
Brett