What are the advantages and disadvantages of using XML as a communication format for PHP scripts?

Using XML as a communication format for PHP scripts has the advantage of being a standardized format that is easily readable and can be parsed by different programming languages. However, XML can be verbose and may not be as efficient as other formats like JSON. Additionally, parsing XML can be more complex and resource-intensive compared to other formats.

// Example of parsing XML data in PHP
$xmlData = '<data><name>John Doe</name><age>30</age></data>';
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlData);
$name = $xml->name;
$age = $xml->age;
echo "Name: $name, Age: $age";