A simple post for today. A HUGE thanks to @gaarf for his post!

<?
/**
 * convert xml string to php array - useful to get a serializable value
 *
 * @param string $xmlstr
 * @return array
 * @author Adrien aka Gaarf
 */
function xmlstr_to_array($xmlstr) {
  $doc = new DOMDocument();
  $doc->loadXML($xmlstr);
  return domnode_to_array($doc->documentElement);
}
function domnode_to_array($node) {
  $output = array();
  switch ($node->nodeType) {
   case XML_CDATA_SECTION_NODE:
   case XML_TEXT_NODE:
    $output = trim($node->textContent);
   break;
   case XML_ELEMENT_NODE:
    for ($i=0, $m=$node->childNodes->length; $i<$m; $i++) {
     $child = $node->childNodes->item($i);
     $v = domnode_to_array($child);
     if(isset($child->tagName)) {
       $t = $child->tagName;
       if(!isset($output[$t])) {
        $output[$t] = array();
       }
       $output[$t][] = $v;
     }
     elseif($v) {
      $output = (string) $v;
     }
    }
    if(is_array($output)) {
     if($node->attributes->length) {
      $a = array();
      foreach($node->attributes as $attrName => $attrNode) {
       $a[$attrName] = (string) $attrNode->value;
      }
      $output['@attributes'] = $a;
     }
     foreach ($output as $t => $v) {
      if(is_array($v) && count($v)==1 && $t!='@attributes') {
       $output[$t] = $v[0];
      }
     }
    }
   break;
  }
  return $output;
}
?>