How to extend SimpleXML with missing functionality

Ever thought SimpleXML is too simple? Did you know, you can easily extend the SimpleXMLElement class?

From Rob Richards on the PHP internals mailinglist:

This [getting name and type of a Node] can be done extending the SimpleXMLElement and the functions are a whole 1 line of user code:
<?php
class cNode extends SimpleXMLElement {
  function getName() {
     return dom_import_simplexml($this)->nodeName;
  }

  function getType() {
     return dom_import_simplexml($this)->nodeType;
  }
}

$xml = '<root />';

$sxe = simplexml_load_string($xml, 'cNode');
print $sxe->getName()."n";
print $sxe->getType()."n";
?>

dom_import_simplexml() and simplexml_import_dom() are zero-copy (on the internal dom tree) operations, therefore the performance loss is really negligible.