Array To Xml Laravel Package

Getting Started

Start by installing the package via Composer: composer require spatie/array-to-xml. No Laravel service provider registration is needed—it’s a plain PHP utility. The core usage is straightforward:

use Spatie\ArrayToXml\ArrayToXml;

$xml = ArrayToXml::convert([
    'user' => [
        '@attributes' => ['id' => 123],
        'name' => 'Jane Doe',
        'email' => 'jane@example.com',
    ]
], 'response');

echo $xml; // Outputs valid XML with <response> root

The first example in the README covers the most common pattern—converting a simple nested array to XML—and is the best place to begin. For Laravel users, drop it into a controller method, job, or console command where XML generation is required (e.g., sitemap generation or legacy API responses).

Implementation Patterns

• Route/Controller Usage: Use in API endpoints that must return XML (e.g., Feeds, XML-RPC, or EDI integrations):

  return response($xml)
      ->header('Content-Type', 'application/xml');
  

• ** queued Jobs/Commands**: Generate large XML files (e.g., product feeds) asynchronously. Stream output using ArrayToXml::convert([...], 'root', null, false) with echo inside a command.
• Laravel Collections: Bridge collections to XML using collect([...])->toArray() as input.
• Dynamic Structuring: Leverage @attributes, @value, and @cdata magic keys to embed metadata and unescaped content:

  'product' => [
      '@attributes' => ['sku' => 'ABC'],
      '@cdata' => '<description>Raw <b>HTML</b></description>', // or use `@value` for plain text
  ]
  

• Customizing Output: Override default root element name, add XML declaration, or tweak encoding:

  ArrayToXml::convert($data, 'inventory', 'utf-8', false, '1.1');
  

• Testing: Use in feature tests to assert exact XML structure; compare against expected fixtures.

Gotchas and Tips

• Key collisions: Avoid using reserved keys like @attributes, @value, or @cdata as regular array keys—they’re treated as special. If needed, escape them (e.g., product@attributes) or preprocess arrays.
• Empty arrays: Empty arrays render as self-closing tags (e.g., <items/>). If you need <items></items>, manually add a null or placeholder value.
• Performance: For very large datasets (10k+ nodes), avoid pretty-printing ($pretty = true) in production—disabling it ($pretty = false) significantly speeds up generation.
• Encoding: Always sanitize UTF-8 input. Non-UTF-8 characters will cause silent failures or invalid XML unless manually stripped/converted.
• Namespace support: Namespaces (@namespace, @ns) are supported but poorly documented—refer to the unit tests for examples if needed.
• No validation: The package produces well-formed XML but does not validate against schemas. Use external tools (e.g., xmllint) in CI if schema compliance is critical.
• Laravel 10+ tip: No xml response helper is needed—just return the XML string with explicit application/xml header.