It's not that often I need to mess around with CData using PHP SimpleXML but whenever I do I always seem to forget a couple of basics and spend 20 min looking everything up again. So here's that stuff on one page...

 XML

 
<mydoc> 
  <element id="1"><![CDATA[my stuff goes here]]></element> 
</mydoc> 

 Extracting CData from an SimpleXML object (LIBXML_NOCDATA is the important bit):

 

 
$xml = simplexml_load_file('my-file.xml', NULL, LIBXML_NOCDATA); 
$description = $xml->xpath("//item[@id='1']"); 
var_dump($description); 

 Inserting CData into a tree:

 

 
class SimpleXMLExtended extends SimpleXMLElement{ 
  public function addCData($cdata_text){ 
   $node= dom_import_simplexml($this); 
   $no = $node->ownerDocument; 
   $node->appendChild($no->createCDATASection($cdata_text)); 
  } 
} 
 
$doc = new SimpleXMLExtended($xml); 
$element = $doc->addChild('response'); 
$node_note = $element->addChild('note'); 
$node_note->addCData('my cdata guff'); 
var_dump($doc->asXML());