There seems to be a lot of talk about SimpleXML having a "problem" with CDATA, and writing functions to rip it out, etc. I thought so too, at first, but it's actually behaving just fine under PHP 5.2.6
The key is noted above example #6 here:
http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/simplexml.examples.php
"To compare an element or attribute with a string or pass it into a function that requires a string, you must cast it to a string using (string). Otherwise, PHP treats the element as an object."
If a tag contains CDATA, SimpleXML remembers that fact, by representing it separately from the string content of the element. So some functions, including print_r(), might not show what you expect. But if you explicitly cast to a string, you get the whole content.
<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_string('<foo>Text1 & XML entities</foo>');
print_r($xml);
/*
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
[0] => Text1 & XML entities
)
*/
$xml2 = simplexml_load_string('<foo><![CDATA[Text2 & raw data]]></foo>');
print_r($xml2);
/*
SimpleXMLElement Object
(
)
*/
// Where's my CDATA?
// Let's try explicit casts
print_r( (string)$xml );
print_r( (string)$xml2 );
/*
Text1 & XML entities
Text2 & raw data
*/
// Much better
?>