Create association array from xml, usin domdocument.

domdocument.php

<?php

// for example, from RSS
$dom = DOMDocument::loadXML( $string_stored_xml );
$entries = array();
foreach( $dom->getElementsByTagname("item") as $item ){
	$entry = array();
	foreach( $item->childNodes as $node ){
		if( $node->nodeType === 1 ){
			$entry[ $node->nodeName ] = $node->nodeValue;
		}
	}
	array_push( $entries, $entry );
}