Parsing KML in php

I've tried to write a script, that would translate an street address to GPS location. Google maps has quite nice API, which can do this.

The request looks like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=vsehrdova+6,+praha,+czech+republic&output=xml&key=abcdefg

Response is returned in google standard kml.

php code:

   $url= 'http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q='.$q.'&output=xml&key='.$key;  
   $dom = new DomDocument();
   $dom->loadHTMLFile($url);
   $sxe = simplexml_import_dom($dom);

   $xml = $this->simxml2array($sxe);

It is possible to use SimpleXmlElement, but I like more php arrays, so I used this function to convert SimpleXmlElement to php array.

 function simxml2array($object){
     $return=NULL;

     if(is_array($object)){
          foreach($object as $key => $value){
               $key=strtolower($key); 
               $return[$key]=$this->simxml2array($value)
          }
      }else{
         $var=get_object_vars($object);

         if($var){
             foreach($var as $key => $value){
                 $key=strtolower($key); 
                 $return[$key]=$this->simxml2array($value);
              }
        }else
           return strval($object); // strval and everything is fine
        }

       return $return;
  } //simxml2array