The DOMNode class

(PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

Class synopsis

class DOMNode {

/* Constants */

public const int DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED = 1;

public const int DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING = 2;

public const int DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING = 4;

public const int DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS = 8;

public const int DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY = 16;

public const int DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC = 32;

/* Properties */

public readonly string $nodeName;

public ?string $nodeValue;

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;

public string $textContent;

/* Methods */

public appendChild(DOMNode $node): DOMNode|false

public C14N(
    bool $exclusive = false,
    bool $withComments = false,
    ?array $xpath = null,
    ?array $nsPrefixes = null
): string|false

public C14NFile(
    string $uri,
    bool $exclusive = false,
    bool $withComments = false,
    ?array $xpath = null,
    ?array $nsPrefixes = null
): int|false

public cloneNode(bool $deep = false): DOMNode|false

public compareDocumentPosition(DOMNode $other): int

public contains(DOMNode|DOMNameSpaceNode|null $other): bool

public getLineNo(): int

public getNodePath(): ?string

public getRootNode(?array $options = null): DOMNode

public hasAttributes(): bool

public hasChildNodes(): bool

public insertBefore(DOMNode $node, ?DOMNode $child = null): DOMNode|false

public isDefaultNamespace(string $namespace): bool

public isEqualNode(?DOMNode $otherNode): bool

public isSameNode(DOMNode $otherNode): bool

public isSupported(string $feature, string $version): bool

public lookupNamespaceURI(?string $prefix): ?string

public lookupPrefix(string $namespace): ?string

public normalize(): void

public removeChild(DOMNode $child): DOMNode|false

public replaceChild(DOMNode $node, DOMNode $child): DOMNode|false

}

Predefined Constants

DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED: Set when the other node and reference node are not in the same tree.
DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING: Set when the other node precedes the reference node.
DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING: Set when the other node follows the reference node.
DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS: Set when the other node is an ancestor of the reference node.
DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY: Set when the other node is a descendant of the reference node.
DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC: Set when the result depends on implementation-specific behaviour and may not be portable. This may happen with disconnected nodes or with attribute nodes.

Properties

nodeName: Returns the most accurate name for the current node type
nodeValue: The value of this node, depending on its type. Contrary to the W3C specification, the node value of DOMElement nodes is equal to DOMNode::textContent instead of null.
nodeType: Gets the type of the node. One of the predefined XML_*_NODE constants
parentNode: The parent of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
parentElement: The parent element of this element. If there is no such element, this returns null.
childNodes: A DOMNodeList that contains all children of this node. If there are no children, this is an empty DOMNodeList.
firstChild: The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
lastChild: The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
previousSibling: The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
nextSibling: The node immediately following this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
attributes: A DOMNamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is a DOMElement) or null otherwise.
isConnected: Whether the node is connected to a document
ownerDocument: The DOMDocument object associated with this node, or null if this node is a DOMDocument
namespaceURI: The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified.
prefix: The namespace prefix of this node.
localName: Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.
baseURI: The absolute base URI of this node or null if the implementation wasn't able to obtain an absolute URI.
textContent: The text content of this node and its descendants.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.4.0	Method DOMNode::compareDocumentPosition() has been added.
8.4.0	Constants `DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED`, `DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING`, `DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING`, `DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS`, `DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY`, and `DOMNode::DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC` have been added.
8.3.0	Methods DOMNode::contains(), and DOMNode::isEqualNode() have been added.
8.3.0	Properties DOMNode::$parentElement, and DOMNode::$isConnected have been added.
8.0.0	The unimplemented methods DOMNode::compareDocumentPosition(), DOMNode::isEqualNode(), DOMNode::getFeature(), DOMNode::setUserData() and DOMNode::getUserData() have been removed.

Notes

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

DOMNode::appendChild — Adds new child at the end of the children
DOMNode::C14N — Canonicalize nodes to a string
DOMNode::C14NFile — Canonicalize nodes to a file
DOMNode::cloneNode — Clones a node
DOMNode::compareDocumentPosition — Compares the position of two nodes
DOMNode::contains — Checks if node contains other node
DOMNode::getLineNo — Get line number for a node
DOMNode::getNodePath — Get an XPath for a node
DOMNode::getRootNode — Get root node
DOMNode::hasAttributes — Checks if node has attributes
DOMNode::hasChildNodes — Checks if node has children
DOMNode::insertBefore — Adds a new child before a reference node
DOMNode::isDefaultNamespace — Checks if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace or not
DOMNode::isEqualNode — Checks that both nodes are equal
DOMNode::isSameNode — Indicates if two nodes are the same node
DOMNode::isSupported — Checks if feature is supported for specified version
DOMNode::lookupNamespaceURI — Gets the namespace URI of the node based on the prefix
DOMNode::lookupPrefix — Gets the namespace prefix of the node based on the namespace URI
DOMNode::normalize — Normalizes the node
DOMNode::removeChild — Removes child from list of children
DOMNode::replaceChild — Replaces a child

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User Contributed Notes 13 notes

down

marc at ermshaus dot org ¶

15 years ago

It took me forever to find a mapping for the XML_*_NODE constants. So I thought, it'd be handy to paste it here:

 1 XML_ELEMENT_NODE
 2 XML_ATTRIBUTE_NODE
 3 XML_TEXT_NODE
 4 XML_CDATA_SECTION_NODE
 5 XML_ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
 6 XML_ENTITY_NODE
 7 XML_PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
 8 XML_COMMENT_NODE
 9 XML_DOCUMENT_NODE
10 XML_DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
11 XML_DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
12 XML_NOTATION_NODE

down

David Rekowski ¶

14 years ago

You cannot simply overwrite $textContent, to replace the text content of a DOMNode, as the missing readonly flag suggests. Instead you have to do something like this:

<?php

$node->removeChild($node->firstChild);
$node->appendChild(new DOMText('new text content'));

?>

This example shows what happens:

<?php

$doc = DOMDocument::loadXML('<node>old content</node>');
$node = $doc->getElementsByTagName('node')->item(0);
echo "Content 1: ".$node->textContent."\n";

$node->textContent = 'new content';
echo "Content 2: ".$node->textContent."\n";

$newText = new DOMText('new content');

$node->appendChild($newText);
echo "Content 3: ".$node->textContent."\n";

$node->removeChild($node->firstChild);
$node->appendChild($newText);
echo "Content 4: ".$node->textContent."\n";

?>

The output is:

Content 1: old content // starting content
Content 2: old content // trying to replace overwriting $node->textContent
Content 3: old contentnew content // simply appending the new text node
Content 4: new content // removing firstchild before appending the new text node

If you want to have a CDATA section, use this:

<?php
$doc = DOMDocument::loadXML('<node>old content</node>');
$node = $doc->getElementsByTagName('node')->item(0);
$node->removeChild($node->firstChild);
$newText = $doc->createCDATASection('new cdata content');
$node->appendChild($newText);
echo "Content withCDATA: ".$doc->saveXML($node)."\n";
?>

down

R. Studer ¶

14 years ago

For clarification:
The assumingly 'discoverd' by previous posters and seemingly undocumented methods (.getElementsByTagName and .getAttribute) on this class (DOMNode) are in fact methods of the class DOMElement, which inherits from DOMNode.

See: http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.domelement.php

down

Steve K ¶

15 years ago

This class apparently also has a getElementsByTagName method.

I was able to confirm this by evaluating the output from DOMNodeList->item() against various tests with the is_a() function.

down

brian wildwoodassociates.info ¶

15 years ago

This class has a getAttribute method.

Assume that a DOMNode object $ref contained an anchor taken out of a DOMNode List.  Then 

    $url = $ref->getAttribute('href'); 

would isolate the url associated with the href part of the anchor.

down

alastair dot dallas at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

The issues around mixed content took me some experimentation to remember, so I thought I'd add this note to save others time.

When your markup is something like: <div><p>First text.</p><ul><li><p>First bullet</p></li></ul></div>, you'll get XML_ELEMENT_NODEs that are quite regular. The <div> has children <p> and <ul> and the nodeValue for both <p>s yields the text you expect.

But when your markup is more like <p>This is <b>bold</b> and this is <i>italic</i>.</p>, you realize that the nodeValue for XML_ELEMENT_NODEs is not reliable. In this case, you need to look at the <p>'s child nodes. For this example, the <p> has children: #text, <b>, #text, <i>, #text. 

In this example, the nodeValue of <b> and <i> is the same as their #text children. But you could have markup like: <p>This <b>is bold and <i>bold italic</i></b>, you see?</p>. In this case, you need to look at the children of <b>, which will be #text, <i>, because the nodeValue of <b> will not be sufficient.

XML_TEXT_NODEs have no children and are always named '#text'. Depending on how whitespace is handled, your tree may have "empty" #text nodes as children of <body> and elsewhere.

Attributes are nodes, but I had forgotten that they are not in the tree expressed by childNodes. Walking the full tree using childNodes will not visit any attribute nodes.

down

imranomar at gmail dot com ¶

13 years ago

Just discovered that node->nodeValue strips out all the tags

down

metanull ¶

10 years ago

Yet another DOMNode to php array conversion function. 
Other ones on this page are generating too "complex" arrays; this one should keep the array as tidy as possible.
Note: make sure to set LIBXML_NOBLANKS when calling DOMDocument::load, loadXML or loadHTML
See: http://be2.php.net/manual/en/libxml.constants.php
See: http://be2.php.net/manual/en/domdocument.loadxml.php

<?php
         /**
         * Returns an array representation of a DOMNode
         * Note, make sure to use the LIBXML_NOBLANKS flag when loading XML into the DOMDocument
         * @param DOMDocument $dom
         * @param DOMNode $node
         * @return array
         */
        function nodeToArray( $dom, $node) {
            if(!is_a( $dom, 'DOMDocument' ) || !is_a( $node, 'DOMNode' )) {
                return false;
            }
            $array = false; 
            if( empty( trim( $node->localName ))) {// Discard empty nodes
                return false;
            }
            if( XML_TEXT_NODE == $node->nodeType ) {
                return $node->nodeValue;
            }
            foreach ($node->attributes as $attr) { 
                $array['@'.$attr->localName] = $attr->nodeValue; 
            } 
            foreach ($node->childNodes as $childNode) { 
                if ( 1 == $childNode->childNodes->length && XML_TEXT_NODE == $childNode->firstChild->nodeType ) { 
                    $array[$childNode->localName] = $childNode->nodeValue; 
                }  else {
                    if( false !== ($a = self::nodeToArray( $dom, $childNode))) {
                        $array[$childNode->localName] =     $a;
                    }
                }
            }
            return $array; 
        }
?>

down

pizarropablo at gmail dot com ¶

10 years ago

In response to: alastair dot dallas at gmail dot com about "#text" nodes.
"#text" nodes appear when there are spaces or new lines between end tag and next initial tag.

Eg "<data><age>10</age>[SPACES]<other>20</other>[SPACES]</data>"

"data" childNodes has 4 childs:
- age = 10
- #text = spaces
- other = 20
- #text =  spaces

down

matt at lamplightdb dot co dot uk ¶

15 years ago

And apparently also a setAttribute method too:

$node->setAttribute( 'attrName' , 'value' );

down

matej dot golian at gmail dot com ¶

11 years ago

Here is a little function that truncates a DomNode to a specified number of text characters. I use it to generate HTML excerpts for my blog entries.

<?php

function makehtmlexcerpt(DomNode $html, $excerptlength)
{
$remove = 0;
$htmllength = strlen(html_entity_decode($html->textContent, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));
$truncate = $htmllength - $excerptlength;
if($htmllength > $excerptlength)
{
if($html->hasChildNodes())
{
$children = $html->childNodes;
for($counter = 0; $counter < $children->length; $counter ++)
{
$child = $children->item($children->length - ($counter + 1));
$childlength = strlen(html_entity_decode($child->textContent, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));
if($childlength <= $truncate)
{
$remove ++;
$truncate = $truncate - $childlength;
}
else
{
$child = makehtmlexcerpt($child, $childlength - $truncate);
break;
}
}
if($remove != 0)
{
for($counter = 0; $counter < $remove; $counter ++)
{
$html->removeChild($html->lastChild);
}
}
}
else
{
if($html->nodeName == '#text')
{
$html->nodeValue = substr(html_entity_decode($html->nodeValue, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'), 0, $htmllength - $truncate);
}
}
}
return $html;
}

?>

down

-1

Anonymous ¶

6 years ago

It would be helpful if docs for concrete properties mentioned readonly status of some properties:
"
ownerDocument

    The DOMDocument object associated with this node.

"

down

-1

zlk1214 at gmail dot com ¶

8 years ago

A function that can set the inner HTML without encoding error. $html can be broken content such as "<a ID=id20>ssss"
function setInnerHTML($node, $html) {
    removeChildren($node);
    if (empty($html)) {
        return;
    }
   
    $doc = $node->ownerDocument;
    $htmlclip = new DOMDocument();
    $htmlclip->loadHTML('<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"><div>' . $html . '</div>');
    $clipNode = $doc->importNode($htmlclip->documentElement->lastChild->firstChild, true);
    while ($item = $clipNode->firstChild) {
        $node->appendChild($item);
    }
}

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The DOMNode class

Class synopsis

Predefined Constants

Properties

Changelog

Notes

See Also

Table of Contents

Found A Problem?

User Contributed Notes 13 notes