I found myself in need of ‘flattening’ an XML tree. Basically, I needed a means of storing XML elements in to database to search for results at a latter time. The following PHP code transforms the XML tree into an associative array with the following schema
$phparray['parent.child'][$i] = $value
Where $i would indicate the sibling number. The *combination* of the latter index and the sibling number conveniently constitute a primary key 
Okay here’s the code…
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('
‘);
$vals = array();
RecurseXML($xml,$vals);
foreach($vals as $key=>$value)
foreach($value as $k=>$v)
print(“{$key}[{$k}] = {$v}
\n”);
function RecurseXML($xml,&$vals,$parent=”")
{
$child_count = 0;
foreach($xml as $key=>$value)
{
$child_count++;
$k = ($parent == “”) ? (string)$key : $parent . “.” . (string)$key;
if(RecurseXML($value,$vals,$k) == 0) // no childern, aka “leaf node”
$vals[$k][] = (string)$value;
}
return $child_count;
}
/* OUTPUT
type[0] = Lunch
time[0] = 12:30
menu.entree[0] = salad
menu.entree[1] = chips
menu.maincourse[0] = steak
*/
?>
