How to generate xml in codeigniter

Looks like you are developing an API. Why don't you use the RESTServer plugin for CodeIgniter?

It's all handled for you and you don't have to worry about the format. You can choose to output in JSON or XML.

Plugin developed by Phil: https://github.com/philsturgeon/codeigniter-restserver

I believe the most practical, logical and error free way to generate an XML is to create a DOMDocument as suggested by Eineki in this answer, allowing the xmltree to be searched through an xpath query.

With this said, some years ago Dan Simmons created a single MY_xml_helper.php that you can just copy to your application/helpers folder directly. Here's the entire code without comments:

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<?php  if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');if ( ! function_exists('xml_dom')){	function xml_dom()	{		return new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');	}}if ( ! function_exists('xml_add_child')){	function xml_add_child($parent, $name, $value = NULL, $cdata = FALSE)	{		if($parent->ownerDocument != "")		{			$dom = $parent->ownerDocument;					}		else		{			$dom = $parent;		}				$child = $dom->createElement($name);				$parent->appendChild($child);				if($value != NULL)		{			if ($cdata)			{				$child->appendChild($dom->createCdataSection($value));			}			else			{				$child->appendChild($dom->createTextNode($value));			}		}				return $child;			}}if ( ! function_exists('xml_add_attribute')){	function xml_add_attribute($node, $name, $value = NULL)	{		$dom = $node->ownerDocument;							$attribute = $dom->createAttribute($name);		$node->appendChild($attribute);				if($value != NULL)		{			$attribute_value = $dom->createTextNode($value);			$attribute->appendChild($attribute_value);		}				return $node;	}}if ( ! function_exists('xml_print')){	function xml_print($dom, $return = FALSE)	{		$dom->formatOutput = TRUE;		$xml = $dom->saveXML();		if ($return)		{			return $xml;		}		else		{			echo $xml;		}	}}

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