WeberDev.com has this new article today, an introduction to some PHP5 functionality that doesn't seem to get used so much - the SimpleXML functions. The tutorial provides an introduction to the topic, and includes several code examples to get you started.
While PHP has included support for the two standard methods of parsing (read: making sense of) XML - SAX and DOM - since version 4.0, the complexity and inherent geekiness of these methods often turned off all but the most dedicated XML developers. All that has changed, however, with PHP 5.0, which introduces a brand-spanking-new XML extension named SimpleXML that takes all (and I do mean all) the pain out of processing XML documents. Keep reading, and find out how. The Bad Old Days
They describe what it is, how it works, and what kind of situations it's best suited for before getting into the code. They show you how to reference values as objects, grab their attributes, and how to use the XPath function to pick out just the data you need.
