The DOMElement class

(PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

Class synopsis

class DOMElement extends DOMNode implements DOMParentNode, DOMChildNode {
/* Properties */
public readonly string $tagName;
public string $id;
public readonly mixed $schemaTypeInfo = null;
public readonly ?DOMElement $firstElementChild;
public readonly ?DOMElement $lastElementChild;
public readonly int $childElementCount;
/* Inherited properties */
public readonly string $nodeName;
public readonly int $nodeType;
public readonly ?DOMNode $parentNode;
public readonly ?DOMElement $parentElement;
public readonly DOMNodeList $childNodes;
public readonly ?DOMNode $firstChild;
public readonly ?DOMNode $lastChild;
public readonly ?DOMNode $previousSibling;
public readonly ?DOMNode $nextSibling;
public readonly ?DOMNamedNodeMap $attributes;
public readonly bool $isConnected;
public readonly ?DOMDocument $ownerDocument;
public readonly ?string $namespaceURI;
public string $prefix;
public readonly ?string $localName;
public readonly ?string $baseURI;
/* Methods */
public __construct(string $qualifiedName, ?string $value = null, string $namespace = "")
public after(DOMNode|string ...$nodes): void
public append(DOMNode|string ...$nodes): void
public before(DOMNode|string ...$nodes): void
public getAttribute(string $qualifiedName): string
public getAttributeNS(?string $namespace, string $localName): string
public getElementsByTagName(string $qualifiedName): DOMNodeList
public getElementsByTagNameNS(?string $namespace, string $localName): DOMNodeList
public hasAttribute(string $qualifiedName): bool
public hasAttributeNS(?string $namespace, string $localName): bool
public insertAdjacentText(string $where, string $data): void
public prepend(DOMNode|string ...$nodes): void
public remove(): void
public removeAttribute(string $qualifiedName): bool
public removeAttributeNS(?string $namespace, string $localName): void
public replaceChildren(DOMNode|string ...$nodes): void
public replaceWith(DOMNode|string ...$nodes): void
public setAttribute(string $qualifiedName, string $value): DOMAttr|bool
public setAttributeNS(?string $namespace, string $qualifiedName, string $value): void
public setIdAttribute(string $qualifiedName, bool $isId): void
public setIdAttributeNode(DOMAttr $attr, bool $isId): void
public setIdAttributeNS(string $namespace, string $qualifiedName, bool $isId): void
public toggleAttribute(string $qualifiedName, ?bool $force = null): bool
/* Inherited methods */
public DOMNode::C14N(
    bool $exclusive = false,
    bool $withComments = false,
    ?array $xpath = null,
    ?array $nsPrefixes = null
): string|false
public DOMNode::C14NFile(
    string $uri,
    bool $exclusive = false,
    bool $withComments = false,
    ?array $xpath = null,
    ?array $nsPrefixes = null
): int|false
public DOMNode::isEqualNode(?DOMNode $otherNode): bool
public DOMNode::isSameNode(DOMNode $otherNode): bool
public DOMNode::isSupported(string $feature, string $version): bool
}

Properties

childElementCount

The number of child elements.

firstElementChild

First child element or null.

lastElementChild

Last child element or null.

nextElementSibling

The next sibling element or null.

previousElementSibling

The previous sibling element or null.

schemaTypeInfo

Not implemented yet, always return null

tagName

The element name

className

A string representing the classes of the element separated by spaces

id

The element ID

Changelog

Version Description
8.0.0 The firstElementChild, lastElementChild, childElementCount, previousElementSibling, and nextElementSibling properties have been added.
8.0.0 DOMElement implements DOMParentNode and DOMChildNode now.

Notes

Note:

The DOM extension uses UTF-8 encoding. Use mb_convert_encoding(), UConverter::transcode(), or iconv() to handle other encodings.

Table of Contents

add a note

User Contributed Notes 13 notes

up
118
j DOT wagner ( AT ) medieninnovation.com
15 years ago
Caveat!
It took me almost an hour to figure this out, so I hope it saves at least one of you some time.

If you want to debug your DOM tree and try var_dump() or similar you will be fooled into thinking the DOMElement that you are looking at is empty, because var_dump() says: object(DOMElement)#1 (0) { }

After much debugging I found out that all DOM objects are invisible to var_dump() and print_r(), my guess is because they are C objects and not PHP objects. So I tried saveXML(), which works fine on DOMDocument, but is not implemented on DOMElement.

The solution is simple (if you know it):
$xml = $domElement->ownerDocument->saveXML($domElement);

This will give you an XML representation of $domElement.
up
62
Pinochet
15 years ago
Hi to get the value of DOMElement just get the nodeValue public parameter (it is inherited from DOMNode):
<?php
echo $domElement->nodeValue;
?>
Everything is obvious if you now about this thing ;-)
up
38
Janne Enberg
10 years ago
This page doesn't list the inherited properties from DOMNode, e.g. the quite important textContent property. It would be immensely helpful if it would list those as well.
up
26
dpetroff ( at ) gmail.com
13 years ago
Hi!

Combining all th comments, the easiest way to get inner HTML of the node is to use this function:

<?php
function get_inner_html( $node ) {
$innerHTML= '';
$children = $node->childNodes;
foreach (
$children as $child) {
$innerHTML .= $child->ownerDocument->saveXML( $child );
}

return
$innerHTML;
}
?>
up
10
Daniel Morlock
15 years ago
It would be nice to have a function which converts a document/node/element into a string.

Anyways, I use the following code snippet to get the innerHTML value of a DOMNode:

<?php
function getInnerHTML($Node)
{
$Body = $Node->ownerDocument->documentElement->firstChild->firstChild;
$Document = new DOMDocument();
$Document->appendChild($Document->importNode($Body,true));
return
$Document->saveHTML();
}
?>
up
4
felix dot klee at inka dot de
11 years ago
How to rename an element and preserve attributes:

<?php

// Changes the name of element $element to $newName.
function renameElement($element, $newName) {
$newElement = $element->ownerDocument->createElement($newName);
$parentElement = $element->parentNode;
$parentElement->insertBefore($newElement, $element);

$childNodes = $element->childNodes;
while (
$childNodes->length > 0) {
$newElement->appendChild($childNodes->item(0));
}

$attributes = $element->attributes;
while (
$attributes->length > 0) {
$attribute = $attributes->item(0);
if (!
is_null($attribute->namespaceURI)) {
$newElement->setAttributeNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/',
'xmlns:'.$attribute->prefix,
$attribute->namespaceURI);
}
$newElement->setAttributeNode($attribute);
}

$parentElement->removeChild($element);
}

function
prettyPrint($d) {
$d->formatOutput = true;
echo
'<pre>'.htmlspecialchars($d->saveXML()).'</pre>';
}

$d = new DOMDocument( '1.0' );
$d->loadXML('<?xml version="1.0"?>
<library>
<data a:foo="1" x="bar" xmlns:a="http://example.com/a">
<invite>
<username>jmansa</username>
<userid>1</userid>
</invite>
<update>1</update>
</data>
</library>'
);

$xpath = new DOMXPath($d);
$elements = $xpath->query('/library/data');
if (
$elements->length == 1) {
$element = $elements->item(0);
renameElement($element, 'invites');
}

prettyPrint($d);

?>
up
4
patrick smith
15 years ago
Although it may be preferable to use the dom to manipulate elements, sometimes it's useful to actually get the innerHTML from a document element (e.g. to load into a client-side editor).

To get the innerHTML of a specific element ($elem_id) in a specific html file ($filepath):

<?php
$innerHTML
= '';
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTMLFile($filepath);
$elem = $doc->getElementById($elem_id);

// loop through all childNodes, getting html
$children = $elem->childNodes;
foreach (
$children as $child) {
$tmp_doc = new DOMDocument();
$tmp_doc->appendChild($tmp_doc->importNode($child,true));
$innerHTML .= $tmp_doc->saveHTML();
}
?>
up
3
ae.fxx
16 years ago
Hi there.

Remember to append a DOMNode (or any of its descendants) to a DOMDocument __BEFORE__ you try to append a child to it.

I don't know why it has to be this way but it can't be done without it.

bye
up
1
johnny
10 years ago
Get html of a node
$html .= $dom->saveHTML($node);
up
1
Anonymous
13 years ago
you can use DOMNode::nodeValue
DOMElement inherits this public property.

$elem->nodeValue
up
1
loopduplicate at burningtoken dot com
13 years ago
This works perfect for me as well:

<?php $xml = $domElement->ownerDocument->saveXML($domElement); ?>
up
1
nawaman at gmail dot com
14 years ago
The following code shows can text-only content be extracted from a document.

<?php
function getTextFromNode($Node, $Text = "") {
if (
$Node->tagName == null)
return
$Text.$Node->textContent;

$Node = $Node->firstChild;
if (
$Node != null)
$Text = getTextFromNode($Node, $Text);

while(
$Node->nextSibling != null) {
$Text = getTextFromNode($Node->nextSibling, $Text);
$Node = $Node->nextSibling;
}
return
$Text;
}

function
getTextFromDocument($DOMDoc) {
return
getTextFromNode($DOMDoc->documentElement);
}

$Doc = new DOMDocument();
$Doc->loadHTMLFile("Test.html");
echo
getTextFromDocument($Doc)."\n";
?>
up
-3
Severin
15 years ago
I wanted to find similar Elements - thats why I built an Xpath-String like this - maybe somebody needs it... its not very pretty - but neither is domdocument :)

<?php

$dom
->load($xmlFile))

$xpathQuery = '//*';
$xmlNodes = $xpath->query($xpathQuery);

$pathlist = array();
$attrlist = array();
foreach (
$xmlNodes as $node) {

$depth = $this->_getDomDepth($node); //get Path-Depth (for array key)
$pathlist[$depth] = $node->tagName; // tagname

$attrs = $node->attributes;
$attr='';
$a=0;
foreach (
$attrs as $attrName => $attrNode) // attributes
{
if (
$attrName !='reg')
{
if (
$a++!=0) $attr .= ' and ';
$attr .= '@'.$attrName.'='."'".$attrNode->value."'";
}
}

$attrlist[$depth] = $attr?'['.$attr.']':'';

$path = ''; for ($i=0;$i<=$depth;$i++) $path .= '/'.$pathlist[$i].$attrlist[$i]; // the xpath of the actual Element

// ... now you can go on and user $path to find similar elements
}
}
}

private function
_getDomDepth(DomNode $node)
{
$r = -2;
while (
$node) {
$r++;
$node = $node->parentNode;
}
return
$r;
}
?>
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