What is the purpose of the simplexml_load_string() function in PHP?

The simplexml_load_string() function in PHP is used to convert an XML string into a SimpleXMLElement object, which can then be easily traversed and manipulated using PHP. This function is commonly used when working with XML data from APIs, web services, or other sources, allowing developers to parse and extract information from the XML structure.

$xml_string = '<data><item>First item</item><item>Second item</item></data>';
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml_string);

foreach ($xml->item as $item) {
    echo $item . "<br>";
}