What are some best practices for handling and manipulating XML data in PHP?

When handling and manipulating XML data in PHP, it is best practice to use the SimpleXMLElement class to parse and manipulate the XML data. This class provides an easy way to access and modify XML elements and attributes. Additionally, it is recommended to use the DOMDocument class for more advanced XML manipulation tasks.

// Load XML data from a file
$xml = simplexml_load_file('data.xml');

// Access and modify XML elements
$xml->book[0]->title = 'New Title';
$xml->book[1]['id'] = 2;

// Convert SimpleXMLElement object back to XML string
$updatedXml = $xml->asXML();

// Save updated XML data to a file
file_put_contents('updated_data.xml', $updatedXml);