Generating XML from HTML list using PHP

I would like to convert the list structure in html:

<ul>
    <li>Section 1</li>
    <li>Section 2
        <ul>
            <li>Section 2.1</li>
            <li>Section 2.2</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li>Section 3</li>
</ul>

Into XML like this:

<sections>
    <section>
        <caption>Section 1</caption>
        <level>0</level>
    </section>
    <section>
        <capt开发者_StackOverflowion>Section 2</caption>
        <level>0</level>
    </section>
    <section>
        <caption>Section 2.1</caption>
        <level>1</level>
    </section>
    <section>
        <caption>Section 2.2</caption>
        <level>1</level>
    </section>
    <section>
        <caption>Section 3</caption>
        <level>0</level>
    </section>
</sections>

I tried to use PHP SimpleXML to read in the html but it seems to have problem when it encounters an <ul> tag inside a <li> tag.

I wonder if someone can kindly suggest what the simplest way is to get this done in PHP?

Many thanks to you all.

---

You could always just parse that HTML into your XML structure. Something like this:

Let's assume your HTML is in a page called "sections.html". This is one way you could do what you're looking to do:

<?php


  # Create new DOM object
  $domOb = new DOMDocument();

  # Grab your HTML file
  $html = $domOb->loadHTMLFile(sections.html);

  # Remove whitespace
  $domOb->preserveWhiteSpace = false; 

  # Set the container tag
  $container = $domOb->getElementsByTagName('ul'); 

  # Loop through UL values
  foreach ($container as $row) 
  { 
      # Grab all <li>
      $items = $row->getElementsByTagName('li'); 

      # echo the values  
      echo $items->item(0)->nodeValue.'<br />'; 
      echo $items->item(1)->nodeValue.'<br />'; 
      echo $items->item(2)->nodeValue;

      # You could write to your XML file, store in a string, anything here
    } 

?>

I haven't tested this, but that's the general idea.

Hope this helps.