Re: toString() in SimpleXML?

Hi Marcus, Marcus Boerger wrote:

having a function __toString() would interfere with the mapping ideas of SimpleXML. However it is there internally so you simply do one of the following: php -r '$x=SimpleXML_load_string("<?xml version=\"1.0\"?><root>blablabla</root>"); echo $x, "\n"; var_dump((string)$x);'

I'm aware of that. But how would something like nodeValue() interfere with the mapping ideas behind SimpleXML? IMHO, casts are not intuitive in a development process, especially not when you need them as much as you would in SimpleXML. Now it just feels like working around a problem when coding.

further questions please to general@php.net

as you wish..

Monday, February 14, 2005, 1:23:44 PM, you wrote:

Hi,

I have a feature request. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a toString() or perhaps nodeValue() method in SimpleXML's SimpleXMLElement class? It might make it more obvious that the element is still a SimpleXMLElement object when you want to actually use it (when you print it, the value automagically casts to a string internally, so users might think that it will be casted to a string when you directly access it without a specified property/method, which is not the case). I know that the docs say that you should cast it to a string when you want to do a comparison, but apart from that just being an example, maybe my suggestion is a more obvious one to notice?

regards,

Leendert