SimpleXML (Zend_Config_Xml actually) and foreach : which tag am I iterating? - simplexml

Question

I'm implementing a little event manager in order to use the Observer pattern. To subscribe my observers to my events, I'm using the following xml file :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configData>
<subscriptions>
<subscription>
<eventName>event_name</eventName>
<class>My_Observer_Class</class>
<function>myFunction</function>
</subscription>
<subscription>
<eventName>other_event_name</eventName>
<class>My_Observer_Otherclass</class>
<function>myOtherFunction</function>
</subscription>
</subscriptions>
</configData>
I'm using a foreach to loop on the subscriptions :
foreach($subscriptions->subscription as $subscription) {
/* using $subscription->eventName etc... */
}
And everything is ok, each $subscription item has it's eventName etc...
But here comes my problem :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configData>
<subscriptions>
<subscription>
<eventName>event_name</eventName>
<class>My_Observer_Class</class>
<function>myFunction</function>
</subscription>
</subscriptions>
</configData>
Here I have only one <subscription> node. And my foreach loops on the subscription children !
To solve this problem, I'd like to know how I can check if the xml file contains several <subscription> tags, or just one...
Any help will be appreciated :)
Edit : Is there a way to use xpath with my Zend_Config_Xml object ?

Answer 1

You can use Xpath.
Please try below code, i have tested it with both of sample XML's you provided.
<?php
$subscriptions = simplexml_load_file('test.xml');
$scTag = $subscriptions->xpath("//subscription");
foreach($scTag as $subscription) {
echo $subscription->eventName;
/* using $subscription->eventName etc... */
}
?>
hope this help !

Answer 2

Just to clarify, this is an issue with Zend_Config_XML which is not present in PHP's native SimpleXML.
Given your second example as $xml, I can run the following and get the word 'subscription' as expected:
$configData = simplexml_load_string($xml);
foreach($configData->subscriptions->subscription as $subscription)
{
echo $subscription->getName();
}