Check if xml node exists in PHP

Question

I have this simplexml result object:

 object(SimpleXMLElement)#207 (2) {
  ["@attributes"]=>
  array(1) {
   ["version"]=>
   string(1) "1"
  }
  ["weather"]=>
  object(SimpleXMLElement)#206 (2) {
   ["@attributes"]=>
   array(1) {
   ["section"]=>
   string(1) "0"
  }
  ["problem_cause"]=>
  object(SimpleXMLElement)#94 (1) {
   ["@attributes"]=>
   array(1) {
   ["data"]=>
   string(0) ""
   }
  }
  }
 }

I need to check if the node "problem_cause" exists. Even if it is empty, the result is an error. On the php manual, I found this php code that I modified for my needs:

 function xml_child_exists($xml, $childpath)
 {
    $result = $xml->xpath($childpath);
    if (count($result)) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
 }

 if(xml_child_exists($xml, 'THE_PATH')) //error
 {
  return false;
 }
 return $xml;

I have no idea what to put in place of the xpath query 'THE_PATH' to check if the node exists. Or is it better to convert the simplexml object to dom?

Answer 1

Sounds like a simple isset() solves this problem.

<?php
$s = new SimpleXMLElement('<foo version="1">
  <weather section="0" />
  <problem_cause data="" />
</foo>');
// var_dump($s) produces the same output as in the question, except for the object id numbers.
echo isset($s->problem_cause)  ? '+' : '-';

$s = new SimpleXMLElement('<foo version="1">
  <weather section="0" />
</foo>');
echo isset($s->problem_cause)  ? '+' : '-';

prints +- without any error/warning message.