Parsing XML with DOM - getElementsByTagName question

[boff2000]

Do you need to use getElementsByTagName in order to get to node data? I would rather parse XML with indexes. I've looked at DOMNodeList-item(), but it only seems to work after getElementsByTagName is used..

What is an alternate for the code below using indexes?

[code]<?php

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc -> load("file.xml");

$items = $doc->getElementsByTagName("ITEM");
$name = $doc->getElementsByTagName("NAME");
$age = $doc->getElementsByTagName("AGE");

echo $name->item(0)->nodeValue . '<br>' .  $age->item(0)->nodeValue; //Anders  2

?>[/code]

XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<CONTENT>
<ITEM>
<NAME>Anders</NAME>
<NICKN>Andy</NICKN>
<AGE>2</AGE>
</ITEM>
</CONTENT>