Is it possible to append a url path to a textnode that was generated via a loop?

I have a php script that outputs XML. This is done by looping through a database and then adding each field found as a node and then the content of that field as a text node. Originally this worked great... Only problem now is I have an image in a database. Lets say image1.jpg.

So the xml node is

<image>image1.jpg</image>

but i need it to be

<image>http://ift.tt/1zGprch;

Now in an earliery version I had code like

($r['fieldname'])

So i could just use the dot to concationate but now that I'm using a loop to actually generate the entire document, is there any way to add this string?

In theory I could try:

            if$column_name == 'item_name'){
                $val = 'hello' . $val;
            }