Parsing xml-like data

I have a string with xml-like data:

<header>Article header</header>
<description>This article is about you</description>
<text>some <b>html</b> text</text>

I need to parse 开发者_运维技巧it into variables/object/array "header", "description", "text".

What is the best way to do this? I tried $vars = simplexml_load_string($content), but it does not work, because it is not 100% pure xml (no <?xml...).

So, should I use preg_match? Is it the only way?

Your XML string looks like (though may or may not be) an XML document fragment. PHP can work with this using the DOMDocumentFragment class.

$doc  = new DOMDocument;
$frag = $doc->createDocumentFragment();
$frag->appendXML($content);

$parsed = array();
foreach ($frag->childNodes as $element) {
    if ($element->nodeType === XML_ELEMENT_NODE) {
        $parsed[$element->nodeName] = $element->textContent;
    }
}

echo $parsed['description']; // This article is about you

With a string like that, simlexml_load_string should work.

Because of the 3rd tag, if you try to get that it will fail, and not return the correct value (because there is a sub part within the tag.

Try something like this, which might work for you:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($content)
$text = $xml->text->asXML();

You should also take a look at this documentation: http://www.php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.asxml.php. They also do the same thing with the string. You might wanna use this option instead of simplexml_load_string too

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($string);