note 52583 added to ref.simplexml

Hi, If you want to access an element that has a dash in its name, (as is common with the XML documents provided by the Library of Congress, as well as the NWS) you will need to handle it a little bit differently. You can either use XPATH, which works fine, but will return an array of results every time, even if there is a single result. eg. $xml->xpath('/data/time-layout/start-valid-time'} You can also choose just to encapsulate the element names containing a dash: $xml->data->{'time-layout'}->{'start-valid-time'} -- On a only partially related note, dealing with SimpleXML is one of the only times I have employed casting with PHP. While iterating (foreach) through the valid times, echo'ing the element worked great (it merely echo'ed the apropriate time), assigning it to another variable resulted in a SimpleXML object containing the time to be assigned, rather than just the time itself. This was resolved by casting the time to a string: foreach($xml->data->{'time-layout'}->{'start-valid-time'} AS $time) { $weatherDates[] = (string) $time; } ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.simplexml.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+52583 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+52583&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+52583&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+52583&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+52583&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+52583&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+52583&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php