<?php
$xml = <<<EOD
<book xmlns:chap="http://example.org/chapter-title">
<title>My Book</title>
<chapter id="1">
<chap:title>Chapter 1</chap:title>
<para>Donec velit. Nullam eget tellus vitae tortor gravida scelerisque.
In orci lorem, cursus imperdiet, ultricies non, hendrerit et, orci.
Nulla facilisi. Nullam velit nisl, laoreet id, condimentum ut,
ultricies id, mauris.</para>
</chapter>
<chapter id="2">
<chap:title>Chapter 2</chap:title>
<para>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Proin
gravida. Phasellus tincidunt massa vel urna. Proin adipiscing quam
vitae odio. Sed dictum. Ut tincidunt lorem ac lorem. Duis eros
tellus, pharetra id, faucibus eu, dapibus dictum, odio.</para>
</chapter>
</book>
EOD;
$sxe = new SimpleXMLElement($xml);
$sxe->registerXPathNamespace('c', 'http://example.org/chapter-title');
$result = $sxe->xpath('//c:title');
foreach ($result as $title) {
echo $title . "\n";
}
?>
Notice how the XML document shown in the example sets a namespace with a
prefix of chap. Imagine that this document (or another
one like it) may have used a prefix of c in the past for
the same namespace. Since it has changed, the XPath query will no longer
return the proper results and the query will require modification. Using
registerXPathNamespace avoids future modification of the
query even if the provider changes the namespace prefix.
SimpleXMLElement->getNamespaces()
