Parsing XML data and XML file with php

<?php
Step1:

// Lets parse some xml data

$data = '<?xml version="1.0"?>
<organization><employees><employee><id>1</id><name>JohnChow</name><age>25</age></employee><employee><id>2</id><name>Simon</name><age>19</age></employee></employees></organization>';

$xml = simplexml_load_string($data);                       
$response_arr = array();
                                               
foreach ($xml->xpath('//employee') as     $ch)
{                           
$employee_id = $ch->id;                           
$response_arr[(string)$employee_id]=array('id'=>(string)$employee_id,'name'=>(string)$ch->name,'age'=>(string)$ch->age);
}

print_r($response_arr);


Step2:

Now lets parse an xml file (with same data as above)

  The xml file is shown below as a reference:

$file = 'sample.xml';

$xml = simplexml_load_file($file);                       
$response_arr = array();
                                               
foreach ($xml->xpath('//employee') as     $ch)
{                           
$employee_id = $ch->id;                           
$response_arr[(string)$employee_id]=array('id'=>(string)$employee_id,'name'=>(string)$ch->name,'age'=>(string)$ch->age);
}

print_r($response_arr);
?>

In both cases, we get the same output in array format, as shown below: