How to find child element based on a specific node in PHP? - php

Question

We can use the childNodes property,and item() function to locate a child element based on a parent node, however, if the path between the parent and the child is too long, there might have be too many childNodes->item() that is needed to be writing, like the PHP I listed below, I want to find the content inside the P tag, based on node Table, you can check the variable $sentences, I don't know if this is the only way to deal with such situation, is there any better way to do this?
HTML
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Sentence 1</p>
</td>
<tr>
<tr>
<td>
<a>Click 1</a>
</td>
<tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Sentence 2</p>
</td>
<tr>
<tr>
<td>
<a>Click 2</a>
</td>
<tr>
</table>
Here is my PHP code
$content = file_get_contents('./a.html');
$dom = new \domDocument;
#$dom->loadHTML($content);
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$xpath = new \DOMXPath($dom);
$table_list = $xpath->query('//table');
foreach($table_list as $k=>$table_node){
$sentence1 = $table_node->childNodes->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue;
}
I need to get the value inside P tag, you can see the code is really long to just get the value inside the P tag, is there any way I can shorten the code, like using
$sentence1 = $table_node->FIND('//tr/td/p')
Instead of writing childNodes->item() repeatedly?

Answer 1

$content = file_get_contents('./a.html');
$dom = new \domDocument;
#$dom->loadHTML($content);
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$xpath = new \DOMXPath($dom);
$table_list = $xpath->query('//table/tr/td/p');
$sentences = array();
foreach($table_list as $k=>$table_node){
$sentences[] = $table_node->nodeValue;
}

Answer 2

If I understand you correctly, you can simply do this: $xpath->query('/table//p'). It will return all p elements that are a direct or indirect child of the table element at the root.