SimpleXML is not working with xml response from external api

Question

I am doing my first steps with WordPress_plugins/PHP and just faced my first wall. Will try to do my best in order to explain the problem, please give me some discount.

I am creating a plugin for WordPress website that needs to call an external Rest API server and get the inventory value of a specific product, for this purpose I am using wp_remote_get & wp_remote_retrieve_body. Until this point everything is working fine, the connection is made successfully and I do get the response in XML.

The problem starts when I try to extract the data (value of the quantity in stock) from the XML response. For some reason it is resulting in NULL, I have printed the response just to make sure the data is actually there and indeed it is.

Also, I stored the printed response in to a variable and tried to use the same logic in order to get the value I am looking for and it worked just fine.

Please see my code/comments below, any advice will be much appreciated, thank you:

//The Rest API xml response obtained by wp_remote_get & wp_remote_retrieve_body.
$response_body          = get_api_response($api_url, $arguments);
//The xml data for the "$response_body_manual" was obtained by "Copy Outer HTML" when inspecting the printed/echo element of the "$response_body" on the web browser
$response_body_manual = 
   '<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?-->
    <inventories>
        <inventory>
            <product>TestProduct</product>
            <productinventories>
                <productinventory>
                    <site>101</site>
                    <quantityinstock>238.00000</quantityinstock>
                    <quantityhardallocated>0.00000</quantityhardallocated>
                    <quantitysoftallocated>0.00000</quantitysoftallocated>
                </productinventory>
            </productinventories>
        </inventory>
    </inventories>';

//Parse the response
$xml        = simplexml_load_string($response_body);
$xml_manual = simplexml_load_string($response_body_manual);

//Get the quantityinstock value
$QtyInStock_xml         = $xml->inventory->productinventories->productinventory->quantityinstock;
$QtyInStock_xml_manual  = $xml_manual->inventory->productinventories->productinventory->quantityinstock;

//Print out the results
echo "<center><pre>";
print($response_body  . "<br>");
print("XML String loaded successfully"  . "<br>");
print("Quantity_in_stock_xml -> " . $QtyInStock_xml . "<br>");
print("Quantity_in_stock_xml_manual -> " . $QtyInStock_xml_manual . "<br>");
echo "</center></pre>";

//Result
//
//<pre>
//  <!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?-->
//  <inventories>
//      <inventory>
//          <product>TestProduct</product>
//          <productinventories>
//              <productinventory>
//                  <site>101</site>
//                  <quantityinstock>238.00000</quantityinstock>
//                  <quantityhardallocated>0.00000</quantityhardallocated>
//                  <quantitysoftallocated>0.00000</quantitysoftallocated>
//              </productinventory>
//          </productinventories>
//      </inventory>
//  </inventories>
//
//<br>XML String loaded successfully
//<br>Quantity_in_stock_xml -&gt; 
//<br>Quantity_in_stock_xml_manual -&gt; 238.00000<br></pre>

As you can see, I am able to get the quantity in stock value when using a manually created response but not when directly from the api response variable.

Question: What am I missing/doing wrong when getting the XML element value directly from the API response variable?

Thank you

---------------------------------------------------------------------

18-03-2020 15:30

Based on Mikhail's suggestion I did some XML error testing, please see below:

I run my script with the below code added to it and the result was "No loading errors found.":

    libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
    $sxe = simplexml_load_string($response_body);
    if ($sxe === false) {
        echo "Failed loading XML\n";
        foreach(libxml_get_errors() as $error) {
            echo "<center><pre>";
            echo "\t", $error->message;
            echo "</center></pre>";
        }
    }
    else{
        echo "<center><pre>";
        echo "No loading errors found.<br>";
        print_r($sxe);
        echo "</center></pre>";
    }

Also, the print result of simplexml_load_string($response_body) is like this:

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [Inventory] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [Product] => TestProduct
            [ProductInventories] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                (
                    [ProductInventory] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [Site] => 101
                            [QuantityInStock] => 238.00000
                            [QuantityHardAllocated] => 0.00000
                            [QuantitySoftAllocated] => 0.00000
                        )

                )

        )

)

I don't really understand what is wrong... Thank you guys in advance for any help.

Answer 1

And according to your output

SimpleXMLElement Object
(
    [Inventory] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [Product] => TestProduct
            [ProductInventories] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                (
                    [ProductInventory] => SimpleXMLElement Object
                        (
                            [Site] => 101
                            [QuantityInStock] => 238.00000
                            [QuantityHardAllocated] => 0.00000
                            [QuantitySoftAllocated] => 0.00000
                        )

                )

        )

)

You have to access your variable inside object parsed from this XML as:

$QtyInStock_xml  = $xml_parsed_obj->Inventory->ProductInventories->ProductInventory->QuantityInStock;

Just because XML is case sensitive ! and object's keys in PHP are case sensitive too.

Overall keep in mind that PHP's variables are case sensitive.

If to dig deeper function names are non case sensitive, but never rely on it! forget about it and never disrespect function's name case !

Just accept it as a rule that whatever code you type, either it's a variable or function - treat everything as case sensitive and may the good code be with you :)