Delete XML node with SimpleXML, PHP - php

Question

I'm trying to delete XML node with PHP (SimpleXML).
This is my XML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<items>
<a>
<name>A1</name>
<b>
<title>Item1</title>
<url>item1</url>
</b>
<b>
<title>Item2</title>
<url>item2</url>
</b>
<b>
<title>Item3</title>
<url>item3</url>
</b>
</a>
<a>
<name>A2</name>
<b>
<title>Item1</title>
<url>item1</url>
</b>
</a>
</items>
and this is my PHP code:
<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file($_GET["xml"]);
$sxe = new SimpleXMLElement($xml->asXML());
$ID = $_GET["ID"];
$i = -1;
$num = $_GET["num"];
foreach ($sxe->children() as $var) {
if ($var == $ID) {
foreach ($var->children() as $data) {
if ($data == "link") {
$i++;
if ($i == $num) {
if ( ! empty($sxe)) {
unset($sxe[0]);
}
}
}
}
}
}
$sxe->asXML($_GET["xml"]);
?>
This code looks for with data of $ID (for example, $ID="A1"). The node it looks to delete is a node (with its and ), which is the #$num node.
Example: if $ID="A1" and $num=1,
it needs to delete the node with the title "Item2" and url "item2".
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Use xpath to find a node. With your example it will be
//a[name="A1"]/b[2]
and use DomDocument method removeChild to change xml
$sxe = simplexml_load_string($xml);
$node = $sxe->xpath('//a[name="'. $ID .'"]/b['. $num .']');
$dom=dom_import_simplexml($node[0]);
$dom->parentNode->removeChild($dom);
echo $sxe->asXML();