Parsing XML into PHP array.

I'm having trouble getting the XML string to be broken up into the PHP array. Here's how it work. I send the XML request in a string to the credit bureau through cURL and vice versa. Most of the PHP scripting I found everywhere spoke about breaking up the xml tag into the array only when they come from the file and is use for parsing. Problem here is it is illegal to store the credit inquiry information to a file on the server except temporary storing it in the RAM but then it will have to be destroyed when it is done. I don't need to parse it, just want to use the tag name as the name in the array with the data from the tag as data to that array name. What is the work around for this?? Thanks, FletchSOD