PHP Conference Nagoya 2025

    DOMDocument::createElement

    (PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

    DOMDocument::createElement — Crea un nuevo nodo elemento

    Descripción

    public DOMDocument::createElement(string $localName, string $value = ""): DOMElement|false

    Esta función crea una nueva instancia de la clase DOMElement. Este nodo no se mostrará en el documento a no ser que sea insertado con (p.e.j.) DOMNode::appendChild().

    Parámetros

    localName

    El nombre de etiqueta del elemento.

    value

    El valor del elemento. De manera predeterminada se creará un elemento vacio. El valor también puede ser asignado más tarde con DOMElement::$nodeValue.

    El valor es usado al pie de la letra, excepto que las referencias de entidad < y > se escaparán. Tenga en cuenta que & tiene que ser escapado manualmente; de lo contrario, se tomará como inicio de una referencia de entidad. Además " no sera escapado.

    Valores devueltos

    Devuelve una nueva instanca de la clase DOMElement o false si ha ocurrido un error.

    Errores/Excepciones

    DOM_INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

    Lanzado si localName contiene un carácter inválido.

    Ejemplos

    Ejemplo #1 Crear un nuevo elemento e insertarlo como raíz

    <?php

    $dom     = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');

    $element = $dom->createElement('test', 'This is the root element!');

    // Insertamos el nuevo elemento como raíz (hijo del documento)
    $dom->appendChild($element);

    echo     $dom->saveXML();
    ?>

    El resultado del ejemplo sería:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<test>This is the root element!</test>

    Ejemplo #2 Pasando texto que contiene un & sin escapar como valor

    <?php
    $dom     = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
    $element = $dom->createElement('foo', 'me & you');
    $dom->appendChild($element);
    echo     $dom->saveXML();
    ?>

    El resultado del ejemplo sería algo similar a:

    Warning: DOMDocument::createElement(): unterminated entity reference             you in /in/BjTCg on line 4
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<foo/>

    Notas

    Nota:

    El parámetro value no será escapado. Utilice DOMDocument::createTextNode() para crear un nodo de texto con soporte para escape de carácteres.

    Ver también

    Found A Problem?

    Learn How To Improve This Page • Submit a Pull Request • Report a Bug
    ＋add a note

    User Contributed Notes 9 notes

    up
    14
    mikek dot nospam at nospam dot muonics dot com
    17 years ago
    With regard to the note below about needing htmlentities to avoid warnings about unterminated entity references, I thought it worthwhile to mention that that you don't need to with createTextNode and DOMText::__construct. If you mix both methods of setting text nodes and do (or don't) apply htmlentities consistently to all data to be displayed, you'll get &amp;s (or warnings and badly-formed xml).

    It's probably in one's best interest to extend DOMElement and DOMDocument so that it creates a DOMText node and appends it, rather than passing it up to the DOMElement constructor. Otherwise, good luck using (or not using) htmlentities in all the right places in your code, especially as code changes get made.

    <?php

    class XDOMElement extends DOMElement {
    function     __construct($name, $value = null, $namespaceURI = null) {
    parent::__construct($name, null, $namespaceURI);
    }
    }

    class     XDOMDocument extends DOMDocument {
    function     __construct($version = null, $encoding = null) {
    parent::__construct($version, $encoding);
    $this->registerNodeClass('DOMElement', 'XDOMElement');
    }

    function     createElement($name, $value = null, $namespaceURI = null) {
    $element = new XDOMElement($name, $value, $namespaceURI);
    $element = $this->importNode($element);
    if (!empty(    $value)) {
    $element->appendChild(new DOMText($value));
    }
    return     $element;
    }
    }

    $doc1 = new XDOMDocument();
    $doc1_e1 = $doc1->createElement('foo', 'bar & baz');
    $doc1->appendChild($doc1_e1);
    echo     $doc1->saveXML();

    $doc2 = new XDOMDocument();
    $doc2_e1 = $doc2->createElement('foo');
    $doc2->appendChild($doc2_e1);
    $doc2_e1->appendChild($doc2->createTextNode('bar & baz'));
    echo     $doc2->saveXML();

    ?>

    Text specified in createElement:
    <?xml version=""?>
    <foo>bar &amp; baz</foo>

    Text added via createTextNode:
    <?xml version=""?>
    <foo>bar &amp; baz</foo>
    up
    5
    yasindagli at gmail dot com
    15 years ago
    To create elements with attributes,

    <?php

    function createElement($domObj, $tag_name, $value = NULL, $attributes = NULL)
    {
    $element = ($value != NULL ) ? $domObj->createElement($tag_name, $value) : $domObj->createElement($tag_name);

    if(     $attributes != NULL )
    {
    foreach (    $attributes as $attr=>$val)
    {
    $element->setAttribute($attr, $val);
    }
    }

    return     $element;
    }

    $dom = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');

    $elm = createElement($dom, 'foo', 'bar', array('attr_name'=>'attr_value'));

    $dom->appendChild($elm);

    echo     $dom->saveXML();

    ?>

    outputs :
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <foo attr_name="attr_value">bar</foo>
    up
    8
    sergsokolenko at gmail dot com
    17 years ago
    To avoid warning message "unterminated entity reference" you may use htmlentities() for escaping supplied value:
    <?php
    //...
    $dom->createElement('name', htmlentities($text))
    //...
    ?>
    up
    6
    funkathustra
    12 years ago
    Although the built-in DOM functions are great, since they're designed to support generic XML, generating HTML DOMs becomes particularly verbose. I ended up writing this function to drastically speed things up.
    Instead of calling something like
    <?php
    $div     = $dom->createElement("div");
    $div->setAttribute("class","MyClass");
    $div->setAttribute("id","MyID");
    $someOtherDiv->appendChild($div);
    ?>
    you can accomplish the same thing with:
    <?php
    $div     = newElement("div", $someOtherDiv, "class=MyClass;id=MyID");
    ?>
    The "key1=value;key2=value" syntax is really fast to use, but obviously doesn't hold up if your content has those characters in it. So, you can also pass it an array:
    <?php
    $div     = newElement("div", $someOtherDiv, array("class","MyClass"));
    ?>
    Or an array of arrays, representing different attributes:
    <?php
    $div     = newElement("form", $someOtherDiv, array(array("method","get"), array("action","/refer/?id=5");
    ?>

    Here's the function:

    <?php
    function newElement($type, $insertInto = NULL, $params=NULL, $content="")
    {
    $tempEl = $this->dom->createElement($type, $content);
    if(    gettype($params) == "string" && strlen($params) > 0)
    {
    $attributesCollection =split(";", $params);
    foreach(    $attributesCollection as $attribute)
    {
    $keyvalue = split("=", $attribute);
    $tempEl->setAttribute($keyvalue[0], $keyvalue[1]);
    }
    }
    if(    gettype($params) == "array")
    {
    if(    gettype($params[0]) == "array")
    {
    foreach(    $params as $attribute)
    {
    $tempEl->setAttribute($attribute[0], $attribute[1]);
    }
    } else {
    $tempEl->setAttribute($params[0], $params[1]);
    }
    }
    ?>
    up
    2
    tschmieder at bitworks dot de
    9 years ago
    Remember:

    If you want to perform multiple actions with a new node, you may need to create a copy of it before

    means:
    ## Create an address to an unique memory block !
    $td = $dom->createElement('td');
    ## Change some things in this original unique pattern
    $td->setAttribute('class', 'saldo');

    ## clone the unique pattern to two own one's
    $td1 = clone $td;
    $td2 = clone $td;

    ## alter properties in each one
    $td1->nodeValue = 'Ich bin die erste neue Node';
    $td2->nodeValue = 'Ich bin die zweite neue Node';

    ## find the parent element
    $tr = $dom->getElementById('t001-tr001');
    ## find the first and the last child (here only for clearity)
    $first = $tr->firstChild;
    $last = $tr->lastChild;

    ## produce the new nodes
    $newtd1 = $tr->insertBefore($td1, $first);
    $newtd2 = $tr->appendChild($td2);

    conclusion:
    YOU NEED AN ORIGINAL NEW NODE FOR EACH ACTION!
    up
    3
    lars dot c dot magnusson at gmail dot com
    14 years ago
    You may think insertBefore and insertAfter is a direct alternative for appendChild, this is not the case.

    <?php
    $dom     = new DOMDocument();
    $dom->load($file);

    $dom->appendChild($newNode); //Works fine
    $dom->insertBefore($newNode, $refNode); //Will fail

    $refNode->parentNode->insertBefore($newNode, $refNode); // thanx to yasindagli (first post)
    ?>
    up
    4
    estill at gvtc dot com
    17 years ago
    Note that the second parameter (value), although convenient, is non-standard. You should create elements like this instead:

    <?php
    $doc     = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'iso-8859-1');

    $root = $doc->createElement('test');
    $doc->appendChild($root);

    $root_text = $doc->createTextNode('This is the root element!');
    $root->appendChild($root_text);

    print     $doc->saveXML();
    ?>

    Or, alternatively, extend the DOMDocument class and add your own custom, convenience method to avoid intruding on the standard:

    <?php
    class CustomDOMDocument extends DOMDocument {
    function     createElementWithText($name, $child_text) {
    // Creates an element with a child text node

    // @param string $name element tag name
    // @param string $child_text child node text

    // @return object new element

    $element = $this->createElement($name);

    $element_text = $this->createTextNode($child_text);
    $element->appendChild($element_text);

    return     $element;
    }
    }

    $doc = new CustomDOMDocument('1.0', 'iso-8859-1');

    $root = $doc->createElementWithText('test', 'This is the root element!');
    $doc->appendChild($root);

    print     $doc->saveXML();
    ?>

    Also use caution with (or avoid) the 'DOMElement->nodeValue' property. It can return some unexpected values and changing its value will replace (remove) all descendants of the element with a single text node. It's also non-standard; according to the DOM spec it should return NULL.
    up
    2
    chris AT cmbuckley DOT co DOT uk
    15 years ago
    Note that the NUL character "\0" is not in the list of invalid characters for $name, so no error is triggered, but the tag name will be truncated at the null byte:

    <?php

    $dom     = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
    $el = $dom->createElement('foo' . "\0" . 'bar', 'Hello World');
    echo     $el->tagName; // outputs "foo"

    ?>
    up
    -1
    dignat at yahoo dot com
    7 years ago
    To create an element with DomDocument and to escape ampersand in the value.

    Do this:

    $element = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');

    $test = $element->createElement('text');

    $test ->appendChild($element->createElement('name'))
    ->appendChild($element->createtextNode('& I am ampersand');
    ＋add a note
    To Top