Get value from SimpleXMLElement Object

Question

You have to cast simpleXML Object to a string.

$value = (string) $xml->code[0]->lat;

You can also use the magic method __toString()

$xml->code[0]->lat->__toString()

If you know that the value of the XML element is a float number (latitude, longitude, distance), you can use (float)

$value = (float) $xml->code[0]->lat;

Also, (int) for integer number:

$value = (int) $xml->code[0]->distance;

if you don't know the value of XML Element, you can use

$value = (string) $xml->code[0]->lat;

if (ctype_digit($value)) {
    // the value is probably an integer because consists only of digits
}

It works when you need to determine if value is a number, because (string) will always return string and is_int($value) returns false

For me its easier to use arrays than objects,

So, I convert an Xml-Object,

$xml = simplexml_load_file('xml_file.xml');    
$json_string = json_encode($xml);    
$result_array = json_decode($json_string, TRUE);

This is the function that has always helped me convert the xml related values to array

function _xml2array ( $xmlObject, $out = array () ){
    foreach ( (array) $xmlObject as $index => $node )
        $out[$index] = ( is_object ( $node ) ) ? _xml2array ( $node ) : $node;

    return $out;
}

try current($xml->code[0]->lat)

it returns element under current pointer of array, which is 0, so you will get value