Simple way to replace elements with certain attributes in php - php

Question

How is it possible to get an element with a certain attribute?
Afterwards I want to replace this element including the tags of the HTML document within PHP?
I tried it here:
$html = '<note>
<span data="getThisElement">New Text</span>
<div data="yes">More Text</div>
</note>';
echo$newTxt = str_replace("<? data="getThisElement", "<div>New Div</div>", $html);
The output should be:
<note>
<div>New Div</div>
<div data="yes">More Text</div>
</note>

Answer 1

You can use preg_replace with this
$html = '<note>
<span data="getThisElement">New Text</span>
<div data="yes">More Text</div>
</note>';
$replace = "<div>New Div</div>";
$output = preg_replace("/<span[^>]*>.*?<\/span>/is",$replace,$html);
echo $output;
or if you want to replace it by specific element
$element = "getThisElement";
$output = str_replace('<span data=" ' . $element . ' ">New Text</span>',$replace,$html);

Answer 2

I would suggest more advanced technique like Simple HTML DOM Parser. Here is your example:
<?php
include "simplehtmldom_1_9_1/simple_html_dom.php";
$html = '<note>
<span data="getThisElement">New Text</span>
<div data="yes">More Text</div>
</note>';
// Create DOM from string
$dom = str_get_html($html);
$dom->find('span[data=getThisElement]', 0)->outertext = '<div>New Div</div>';
echo $dom;
// <note>
// <div>New Div</div>
// <div data="yes">More Text</div>
// </note>

Answer 3

You can get PHP to echo some JS as well as the HTML. This can do the replacements for you as JS is good at parsing HTML and you don't have to add extra functionality to PHP. The result is the same. For more generality you could make the JS a function so can be used elsewhere echoed by the PHP if required.
<?php
$html = '<note>
<span data="getThisElement">New Text</span>
<div data="yes">More Text</div>
</note>';
$repAttr = 'data="getThisElement"';// The attribute of those elements we want to replace
$repWith = '<div>New Div</div>'; // what we want to replace those elements with
?>
<div id="temp">
<script>
let el = document.createElement( 'div' );
let replaceWith = "<div>New Div</div>";
el.innerHTML = `<?php echo $html; ?>`; //note the use of backticks so the string can span many lines
let elsToReplace = el.querySelectorAll( "note"[<?php echo $repAttr; ?>] ); // gets all the elements within $html that have the given attribute
elsToReplace.forEach(function (repEl) {
repEl.outerHTML = '<?php echo $repWith; ?>';
});
document.getElementById("temp").outerHTML = el.innerHTML; //this will overwrite all this setting-up JS so the DOM will have the content required and nothing else
</script>
</div>