Using XPath and DOM
$dom = new DOMDocument; $dom->load('address-book.xml'); $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom); $email = $xpath->query('/address-book/person/email'); // <?xml version="1.0"?> <address-book> <person id="1"> <firstname>D</firstname> <lastname>S</lastname> <city>New York</city> <state>NY</state> <email>s@php.net</email> </person> <person id="2"> <firstname>A</firstname> <lastname>T</lastname> <city>San Francisco</city> <state>CA</state> <email>a@php.net</email> </person> </address-book>