Return data from XML

<ns1:getMerchByIDResponse xmlns:ns1="URLHERE">
  <ns1:return>
   <ns1:applicationStatus>Approved</ns1:applicationStatus>
  </ns1:return>
</ns1:getMerchByIDResponse>

I’m struggling to get a value from this XML markup it always returns null.

>Solution :

$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString, null, LIBXML_NOERROR | LIBXML_NOWARNING, 'ns1', true);

$xml->registerXPathNamespace('ns1', 'URLHERE');

$applicationStatus = $xml->xpath('//ns1:applicationStatus');