Bug #54632 [Com]: json_encode() doesn't convert SimpleXML data properly

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54632&edit=1 ID: 54632 Comment by: php at keithtyler dot com Reported by: enrico at zimuel dot it Summary: json_encode() doesn't convert SimpleXML data properly Status: Open Type: Bug Package: JSON related Operating System: Ubuntu Linux 10.04 PHP Version: 5.3.6 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: It's really too bad that there is not an analogous SimpleJSONElement object. It would seem very PHPian to be able to process and traverse XML and JSON the same way. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-05-02 15:35:22] enrico at zimuel dot it I agree that the var_dump output of the SimpleXMLElement doesn't contains the text value of the <a> element. But, as you said, you can get it from $bar = (string) $simpleXML, that means the data is inside the SimpleXMLElement even if the values is not explicit. The problem here is related to the fact that there is not a standard way to convert an XML into JSON. IBM proposed the JSONx format. To continue to follow the syntax used by SimpleXMLElement we can add a special element (like '@attributes') to manage the text value. For instance the xml document: <a><b id="foo"/>bar</a> can be translated in {"a":{"b":{"@attributes":{"id":"foo"}},"@text":"bar"}}. So, the problem is in SimpleXMLElement? I don't know, for sure the result of json_encode() is not correct. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-04-29 16:20:29] felipecg00 at gmail dot com Looks like the problem is not the json_encode. var_dump( $simpleXML ); object(SimpleXMLElement)#1 (1) { ["b"]=> object(SimpleXMLElement)#2 (1) { ["@attributes"]=> array(1) { ["id"]=> string(3) "foo" } } } Where is bar? This is the behavior of SimpleXML. You can try using DOMDocument: $dd = new DOMDocument(); $dd->loadXML('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><a><b id="foo"/>bar</a>'); echo $dd->documentElement->textContent; // outputs bar Still, you can force the SimpleXMLElement to be a string, so it will contain the text inside the node: $bar = (string) $simpleXML; echo $bar; // outputs 'bar' And yet, there is dom_import_simplexml(), which converts a SimpleXML node into a DOMDocument node. But that i've never used before. I think the right thing to do is to keep the text inside text-only nodes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-04-29 13:42:27] enrico at zimuel dot it Description: ------------ I tried to encode the following XML document in JSON using json_encode() and the result doesn't reflect the XML structure. XML document: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <a><b id="foo"/>bar</a> Result of json_encode(): {"b":{"@attributes":{"id":"foo"}}} The JSON results lost the "bar" value of the XML document. This is the source code that is used: <?php $xml='<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><a><b id="foo"/>bar</a>'; $simpleXML= simplexml_load_string($xml); echo json_encode($simpleXML); Test script: --------------- $xml='<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><a><b id="foo"/>bar</a>'; $simpleXML= simplexml_load_string($xml); echo json_encode($simpleXML); Expected result: ---------------- It's not obviuos the correct JSON rappresentation of the above XML document. In my opinion it can be as follow: {"a":[{"b":{"@attributes":{"id":"foo"}}},"bar"]} Where the value "bar" is included in a JSON array using the syntax [...] Actual result: -------------- {"b":{"@attributes":{"id":"foo"}}} ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54632&edit=1