Re: [PHP-XML-DEV] Can SimpleXML still return all namespaces?

Hi Ben,

Ben Schmidt wrote:
> Hi, Rob,
>
>> This is exactly the purpose of the children() and attributes() methods.
>> They are used to set a namespace scope to work within.
>
> Fantastic! They very nearly do what I want. The biggest problem is 
> simply this: the behaviour is not documented or demonstrated in the 
> manual! Agreeably I am a bit of a newbie, but even so, with such 
> limited documentation it is very easy to leap to wrong 
> conclusions/make wrong assumptions about the behaviour of the module.
>
> If you can point me to where I can get the documentation source, I 
> would be happy to have a go improving it and sending you diffs.
http://doc.php.net/php/dochowto/
>
>> So what you are proposing is just a way to be able to work with 
>> SimpleXML in a completely namespace ignorant way?
>> Basically, ignore all namespaces/prefixes and work directly with 
>> local names only?
>
> Yes. I think that would be useful. SimpleXML would then not only be 
> able to work with simple XML documents, but also do simple processing 
> of more complicated documents.
I am looking into this. I tossed this idea around with a few others and 
they also agree it might be a good idea to allow this type of 
functionality (though it would *NOT* be the default behavior. You would 
need to enable it via some parameter when working with SimpleXML). Still 
thinking about the implementation for this.
>
> Having done some further investigation in light of your exciting 
> revelation about the way children and attributes methods work, my 
> requests/suggestions are somewhat different. Here they are:
>
> 1. IMHO children() and attributes() without a parameter should not 
> change the namespace scope being used. In particular as, to my 
> knowledge, 'attributes' is the only way to enumerate attributes 
> (unlike elements which you can do by enumerating the object itself 
> without using 'children') there needs to be a way to enumerate the 
> attributes in the current scope. Passing no parameter is the most 
> logical way to do this. But passing no parameter resets the scope to 
> 'unprefixed' from what I can gather, which is annoying. You need to 
> keep track of the scope yourself and can't easily write generalised 
> subroutines that work in the current scope of an object.
This is not going to change. Those 2 methods are meant to determine 
namespace scope. SimpleXML is really meant to work with simple documents.
>
> 2. There should be a way to get the current scope of a 
> SimpleXMLElement. (If this were added, at least there'd be a 
> workaround for 1, too!) It would need to return something magic for 
> 'unprefixed' and children and attributes made to understand the magic 
> value. Well, I think that would be better than returning a list of 
> '$ns,$is_prefix' anyway!
getNamespaces() - though this will also add namespaces from attributes 
as well - but again if working with complex documents, SimpleXML alone 
might be the wrong choice - you can mix DOM and SimpleXML without the 
overhead of having to copy documents.
>
> 3. It would be handy to have a method to set the current scope, rather 
> than needing to use 'children' or 'attributes'. This would be 
> particularly useful for the root node, to set the scope for the 
> processing of the entire document. I realise now that it can be done 
> with a constructor, but IMHO it would be easier to understand and 
> convenient if a separate method were provided. I think it would make 
> code more readable, too.
This is not going to change. All of this can already be done without 
having to add additional methods.
>
> 4. A local-name-only mode would be good, as mentioned above.
answered above

Rob