attributes_to_array

attributes_to_array.php

/**
 * Convert a string of attributes to an associative array
 *
 * @param string $attributes_string a string of XML/HTML attributes, ex. width="100" height="200"
 * @return array ex. array('width' => '100', 'height' => '200')
 */
function attributes_to_array($attributes_string) {
  $attributes = array();

	// use simplexml to parse the attributes string
	$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('<element'.$attributes_string.'></element>');

	//loop through all attributes and collect them
	foreach ($xml->attributes() as $key => $value) {
		$attributes[$key] = (string) $value;
	}
	
	return $attributes;
}