Example of xml parsing of RSS with simpleXML and CDATA workaround

books.php

<?php
/**
 * Created by PhpStorm.
 * User: rhett
 * Date: 11/27/15
 * Time: 1:43 PM
 */


/**
 * Parse description to return scripted version for txtToSpeech engine
 *
 * @param String $desc description with html from rss feed
 *
 * @return String string for text to speech engine.
 */
function parseDesc($desc) {
    // do something here
    return $desc;
}

$ch = curl_init("https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet-rss");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$xml = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);


$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);

foreach($xml->channel->item as $item) {
    $pub = array(
      'guid' => (string) $item->guid,
      'title' => (string) $item->title,
      'description_original' => (string) $item->description,
      'pubDate' => (string) $item->pubdate
    );

    $pub['description'] = parseDesc($pub['description_original']);


    var_dump($pub);
}