How to parse SOAP XML?

Question

SOAP XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <PaymentNotification xmlns="http://apilistener.envoyservices.com">
      <payment>
        <uniqueReference>ESDEUR11039872</uniqueReference>      
        <epacsReference>74348dc0-cbf0-df11-b725-001ec9e61285</epacsReference>
        <postingDate>2010-11-15T15:19:45</postingDate>
        <bankCurrency>EUR</bankCurrency>
        <bankAmount>1.00</bankAmount>
        <appliedCurrency>EUR</appliedCurrency>
        <appliedAmount>1.00</appliedAmount>
        <countryCode>ES</countryCode>
        <bankInformation>Sean Wood</bankInformation>
  <merchantReference>ESDEUR11039872</merchantReference>
   </payment>
    </PaymentNotification>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

How to get 'payment' element?

I try to parse (PHP)

$xml = simplexml_load_string($soap_response);
$xml->registerXPathNamespace('soap', 'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/');
foreach ($xml->xpath('//payment') as $item)
{
    print_r($item);
}

Result is empty :( Any ideas how to parse it correct?

Answer 1

One of the simplest ways to handle namespace prefixes is simply to strip them from the XML response before passing it through to simplexml such as below:

$your_xml_response = '<Your XML here>';
$clean_xml = str_ireplace(['SOAP-ENV:', 'SOAP:'], '', $your_xml_response);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($clean_xml);

This would return the following:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [Body] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [PaymentNotification] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                (
                    [payment] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [uniqueReference] => ESDEUR11039872
                            [epacsReference] => 74348dc0-cbf0-df11-b725-001ec9e61285
                            [postingDate] => 2010-11-15T15:19:45
                            [bankCurrency] => EUR
                            [bankAmount] => 1.00
                            [appliedCurrency] => EUR
                            [appliedAmount] => 1.00
                            [countryCode] => ES
                            [bankInformation] => Sean Wood
                            [merchantReference] => ESDEUR11039872
                        )

                )

        )

)