Change outerHTML of a php DOMElement? - php

Question

How do I change the outerHtml of an element using PHP DomDocument class? Make sure, no third party library is used such as Simple PHP Dom or else.
For example:
I want to do something like this.
$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($html);
$tag = $dom->getElementsByTagName('h3');
foreach ($tag as $e) {
$e->outerHTML = '<h5>Hello World</h5>';
}
libxml_clear_errors();
$html = $dom->saveHTML();
echo $html;
And the output should be like this:
Old Output: <h3>Hello World</h3>
But I need this new output: <p>Hello World</p>

Answer 1

You can create a copy of the element content and attributes in a new node (with the new name you need), and use the function replaceChild().
The current code will work only with simple elements (a text inside a node), if you have nested elements, you will need to write a recursive function.
$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($html);
$titles = $dom->getElementsByTagName('h3');
for($i = $titles->length-1 ; $i >= 0 ; $i--)
{
$title = $titles->item($i);
$titleText = $title->textContent ; // get original content of the node
$newTitle = $dom->createElement('h5'); // create a new node with the correct name
$newTitle->textContent = $titleText ; // copy the content of the original node
// copy the attribute (class, style, ...)
$attributes = $title->attributes ;
for($j = $attributes->length-1 ; $j>= 0 ; --$j)
{
$attributeName = $attributes->item($j)->nodeName ;
$attributeValue = $attributes->item($j)->nodeValue ;
$newAttribute = $dom->createAttribute($attributeName);
$newAttribute->nodeValue = $attributeValue ;
$newTitle->appendChild($newAttribute);
}
$title->parentNode->replaceChild($newTitle, $title); // replace original node per our copy
}
libxml_clear_errors();
$html = $dom->saveHTML();
echo $html;