Getting href-attributes using XPath in PHP - php

Question

I am new to PHP and trying to write a scraper for a website.
I am trying to get an element with class name categories. I have use
$showPage = '<li class="categories">Categories<ul> <li class="cat-item cat-item-940"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/amul-taste-of-india/" >Amul Taste of India</a>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-942"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/dance-plus/" >Dance Plus</a>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-239"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/diya-aur-baati-hum-star/" >Diya Aur Baati Hum</a>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-745"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/suhani-si-ek-ladki/" >Suhani Si Ek Ladki</a>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-147"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/star-plus-completed-shows/" >Star Plus Completed Shows</a>
<ul class="children">
<li class="cat-item cat-item-772"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/star-plus-completed-shows/airlines/" >Airlines</a>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-518"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/star-plus-completed-shows/arjun/" >Arjun</a>
</li>
<li class="cat-item cat-item-237"><a href="http://www.desitvbox.me/category/star-plus/star-plus-completed-shows/chef-pankaj-ka-zayka/" >Chef Pankaj Ka Zayka</a>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul></li>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->validateOnParse = true;
$dom->loadHTML($showPage);
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$allShowsList = new DOMXPath($dom);
$allShowsTableHTML = $allShowsList->query('//li[contains(#class, "categories")]');
However, I want to now read the values of all a href mentioned in $allShowsTableHTML.
Can you please advise how can I do that?
As you can see one the record also have ul class = 'childern'. which I also want to read.
I need to get the href and the title.
I have tried below but no result.
$allShowTableDom = new DOMDocument();
foreach ($allShowTableHTML as $showLink)
{
$allShowTableDom->appendChild($allShowTableDom->importNode($showLink,true));
}
$showsArray = $allShowsTableHTML->getElementsByTagName('a');
I think it is not going in foreach loop.

Answer 1

To get all href attributes of the hyperlinks, add some more axis steps, finally loop over the result list, where the ->value property will contain the URIs.
Given you can just dump all href attributes inside the whole <li> element, simply extend your query by //a/#href:
$document = new DOMXPath($dom);
$hrefs = $document->query('//li[contains(#class, "categories")]//a/#href');
foreach ($hrefs as $href) {
echo $href->value;
}
If this contains nodes you don't want to get, you could also descend the contain unsorted list and select with a more specific query:
//li[contains(#class, "categories")]/ul/li/a/#href