SimpleXML is a PHP extension that allows users to easily manipulate/use XML data. It was introduced in PHP 5 as an object oriented approach to the XML DOM providing an object that can be processed with normal property selectors and array iterators.PHP.net SimpleXML intro It represents an easy way of getting an element's attributes and textual content if you know the XML document's structure or layout.onlamp introduction to SimpleXML
Compared to DOM or the Expat parser, SimpleXML takes a fewer lines of code to read text data from an element.w3schools SimpleXML Tutorial
Functions
addAttribute() addChild() asXML() attributes() children() __construct() getDocNamespaces() getName() getNamespaces() registerXPathNamespace() xpath() simplexml_import_dom simplexml_load_file simplexml_load_string
Error handling It is possible to suppress all XML errors when loading the document and then iterate over the errors.
References
External links PHP.net's SimpleXML manual AIP Conf. Proc. 1497, pp. 395-401; Speed up of XML parsers with PHP language implementation devshed SimpleXML Tutorial