Best way to implement an xpath-like configuration system

Question

I'm trying to come up with the best way to handle configuration in an application. At first i just used SimpleXML and put the code in a singleton.

I've decided to try to create a way to query the configuration with something like $config->getConfig('/module/name');

Do you have to use xpath to do this or is there any other method that is faster/easier to use? I know Magento uses this scheme but with a custom xpath-like syntax.

Feel free to suggest different schemes as long as it is based on XML.

SimpleXML is a nice approach however i feel the need to wrap something around it as the return values are almost always objects where I want a string value.

Could someone explain how to wrap the xpath call to return a string value if the query returns a value, or an object if the query has multiple children?

        $xml = $this->xml->xpath($path);

How do you detect if the node returned is a leaf node?

Answer 1

I'd recommend trying SimpleXml as it allows you to write regular PHP to query the XML instead of XPath. If using XPath is a requirement, you can execute XPath expressions with it as well, but being able to write $config->module->name is quite nice, imho.