PHP dash in class and method names

I ran into what seems like a common issue when working with PHP and SimpleXML today. Parsing XML is normally pretty easy:

<?php
header('Content-type: text/plain');

$xmlData = <<<XML
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<trees>
 <fruit>
   <apple name='apple' type='Deciduous' has-fruit='Y' />
   <pear name='pear' type='Deciduous' has-fruit='Y' />
 </fruit>
 <pine>
   <white name='whitepine' type='Coniferous' has-fruit='N' />
 </pine>
</trees>
XML;

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlData);

echo "Testing SimpleXml";
echo "\n".$xmlData;
echo "\nName:".$xml->fruit->apple->getName();
echo " Type:".$xml->fruit->apple->attributes()->type;
?>

Output:
Name:apple Type:Deciduous

However, if you decide to include a hyphen or a dash in the name of your attribute things get a bit more interesting. The code has to be adjusted since the name of a class method cannot contain "-". To make it work, the attribute name has to include braces and single quotes (e.g. "{'name'}").

echo "\n".$xmlData;
echo "\nName:".$xml->fruit->apple->getName();
echo " Type:".$xml->fruit->apple->attributes()->type;
echo "\nFruit?:".$xml->fruit->apple->attributes()->{'has-fruit'};

Output:
Name:apple Type:Deciduous
Fruit?:Y