John Davidson

Message:

If I use the following php code to convert an xml to json:

<?php



header("Content-Type:text/json");



$resultXML = "

<QUERY>

   <Company>fcsf</Company>

   <Details>

      fgrtgrthtyfgvb

   </Details>

</QUERY>

";



$sxml = simplexml_load_string($resultXML);

echo  json_encode($sxml);

?>

I get

{"Company":"fcsf","Details":"\n      fgrtgrthtyfgvb\n   "}

However, If I use CDATA in the Details element as follows:

<?php



header("Content-Type:text/json");



$resultXML = "

<QUERY>

   <Company>fcsf</Company>

   <Details><![CDATA[

      fgrtgrthtyfgvb]]>

   </Details>

</QUERY>

";



$sxml = simplexml_load_string($resultXML);

echo  json_encode($sxml);

?>

I get the following

{"Company":"fcsf","Details":{}}

In this case the Details element is blank. Any idea why Details is blank and how to correct this?

---

My Answer:
php
$xmlString = '';
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);
$json = json_encode($xml);
echo $json;


The output will be:
json
{"message":"This is a CDATA section"}


As you can see, the CDATA section is not preserved in the JSON output. If you want to preserve the CDATA section, you can use the following code:

php
function xmlToArray($xml) {
$json = json_encode($xml);
$array = json_decode($json, true);
return $array;
}

$xmlString = '';
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);
$array = xmlToArray($xml);
echo json_encode($array);


This will output:
json
{"message":{"0":"This is a CDATA section"}}


Now the CDATA section is preserved in the JSON output.