Here's some code that takes an associative array and prints it asXML() but creates CDATA sections for each string
<?php
class SimpleXMLExtended extends SimpleXMLElement{
public function addCData($string){
$dom = dom_import_simplexml($this);
$cdata = $dom->ownerDocument->createCDATASection($string);
$dom->appendChild($cdata);
}
}
function assocArrayToXML($root_element_name,$ar){
$xml = new SimpleXMLExtended("<?xml version=\"1.0\"?><{$root_element_name}></{$root_element_name}>");
$f = create_function('$f,$c,$a','
foreach($a as $k=>$v) {
if(is_array($v)) {
if (!is_numeric($k))$ch=$c->addChild($k);
else $ch = $c->addChild(substr($c->getName(),0,-1));
$f($f,$ch,$v);
} else {
if (is_numeric($v)){ $c->addChild($k, $v);
}else{$n = $c->addChild($k); $n->addCData($v);}
}
}');
$f($f,$xml,$ar);
return $xml->asXML();
}
$result = array("title"=>"CDATA Sample");
$result['items'] = array();
$result['items'][] = array('title'=>'Some string', 'number' => 1);
$result['items'][] = array('title'=>'Some string', 'number' => 2);
$result['items'][] = array('title'=>'Some string', 'number' => 3);
echo assocArrayToXML('result',$result);
?>
The is_numeric check could be changed by a more elaborate regular expression to check if the string is actually xml unsafe but this worked for me.