使用SimpleXML读取参数名称

I have this form given:

<item><parameter name="a">3</parameter></item>

Is it possible to read the "a" with SimpleXML?

I have already tried $xml->item->parameter->getName(); but it only returns "parameter".

Thanks in advance.

Yes, use the attributes() method from SimpleXML

SimpleXML::attributes()

echo (string)$xml->item->parameter->attributes()->name;

codepad example

Alternative solution is using xpath()

SimpleXML::xpath()

$name = $xml->xpath('item/parameter/@name');
echo $name[0];

codepad example

xpath() always returns array (or false in case of error), this why you need to assign it to a var, or if you have php >= 5.4 you can use array dereferencing

echo $xml->xpath('item/parameter/@name')[0];

Read about the SimpleXML function : attribute().

You can use it to get all attributes of an element.
In your case :

$attr = $xml->item->parameter->attributes();
$name = $attr['name'];

see http://php.net/manual/en/simplexmlelement.attributes.php

xml:

<item>
 <parameter name="a">3</parameter >
</item>

php:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($string);
foreach($xml->parameter [0]->attributes() as $a => $b) {
    echo $a,'="',$b,"\"
";
}

// output
name="a"