Display xml values with namespace – using php

You mistake the namespaces prefixes with the actual namespace. The namespace definitions are the xmlns/xmlns:* attributes. Prefixes are optional for element nodes. The document element should be read as {http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts}QTableGridDataSourceForMobileOfDocumentWBuH9k12. Here are 3 examples that all resolve to this:

• <QTableGridDataSourceForMobileOfDocumentWBuH9k12 xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts">
• <q:QTableGridDataSourceForMobileOfDocumentWBuH9k12 xmlns:q="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts">
• <qtable:QTableGridDataSourceForMobileOfDocumentWBuH9k12 xmlns:qtable="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts">

Namespaces can be redefined on any element node. So a prefix will only be valid until redefined. That makes it a really bad idea to rely on the prefixes in the document. Always use the namespace URI and/or define your own prefixes.

SimpleXML does some implicit namespace handling in the background – like using the default namespace of the current context node. The explicit variant would look like this:

const XMLNS_CONTRACTS = 'http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts';
const XMLNS_DOCUMENT = 'http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts.Documents';

$qTable = simplexml_load_string(getXMLString());

foreach($qTable->children(XMLNS_CONTRACTS)->Rows->children(XMLNS_DOCUMENT) as $document) {
    foreach($document as $key => $value) {
        var_dump([$key, (string)$value]);
    }
} 

Or with DOM and Xpath:

Take note that the example uses its own prefixes for the Xpath expressions. It only depends on the namespace URIs.

const XMLNS_CONTRACTS = 'http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts';
const XMLNS_DOCUMENT = 'http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Sinfic.DataContracts.Documents';

$document = new DOMDocument();
$document->loadXML(getXMLString());
$xpath = new DOMXpath($document);
$xpath->registerNamespace('c', XMLNS_CONTRACTS);
$xpath->registerNamespace('d', XMLNS_DOCUMENT);

foreach ($xpath->evaluate('//c:Rows/d:Document') as $rowsDocument) {
    foreach($xpath->evaluate('./d:*', $rowsDocument) as $cell) {
        var_dump(
            [$cell->localName, $cell->textContent]
        );
    }
}

The XML format is not a good one imho – so it might feel annoying to use. XML tags are supposed to be fixed and semantic. Dynamic tag names a big no go.